


Betrayal of the Finest Sort

by cadesama



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Body Horror, Character Death Fix, Consent Issues, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Medical Trauma, Non-Consensual Body Modification, probably eventual threesome because who am I kidding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-02-28 11:21:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2730530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadesama/pseuds/cadesama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after the fall of the Republic, Padme Amidala and Obi-Wan Kenobi hatch a plan to eliminate the Emperor's right hand man -- and save Anakin Skywalker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"I had forgotten how miserable this world is," Obi-Wan said. He dusted his hand through his hair, briskly shaking out the droplets of water his Force shield had allowed through.

Padme looked away from him, lips pressed into a thin line. She’d never been to Kamino before, though she’d seen it often enough on the Holos during the Clone War. It was everything she had expected – austere and unforgiving, corrupt and cruel. Imperial though they hadn’t even known themselves to be the architects of the Empire.

"I suppose I have grown accustomed to the suns," Obi-Wan continued. Padme could feel his eyes on her, that prickling feeling of a Jedi treading where he didn’t belong. "It is odd, but I do miss Tatooine."

"Stop it."

She didn’t want to hear about that planet: either the reason he lived there or the reason he had left. In the ten years since the rise of the Empire, the two of them had come to a tentative agreement. When they met, it was business only. He wasn’t to speak one word of her son unless she asked – and she never did. Bail was bad enough with his tales of Leia, her energy and light and ferocious temper. How he caught her sneaking a speeder bike from the palace grounds, racing in the woods with her friend Winter.

Padme had given them up for their safety at Obi-Wan’s own urging. He had no right to remind her that he knew her son and she did not.

Obi-Wan sighed. He could feel her seething in the Force, but Padme felt no need to rein in her feelings. He deserved them as much as she did.

"We will need to act fast, my lady," he eventually said.

Padme nodded stiffly.

"Then lead the way."

The corridors curved fluidly toward the clone facilities, abandoned all these many years. Walls that had once brightly illuminated the stark aesthetic were dimmed. Scored with blaster fire. There had been purges here, too, though hardly undeserved.

The Kaminoans were in retreat – from the Empire and the galaxy. From life.

Padme skimmed her fingers along the wall as they walked. Obi-Wan had claimed to have friends remaining here, though they would hardly be such by the end of the day. It felt like a price they should be accustomed to paying by now.

They walked for some time in the uninhabited sector of the city, circling every inwards, the soft swish of Obi-Wan’s cloak against the smooth floor the only sound to accompany their steps. But for their breathing. Padme clenched her jaw, wishing to block even that out.

"What did Bail have to say of our plan?" Obi-Wan asked, his words a welcome relief from that terrible sound.

"He says it’s a risk," Padme replied. Which was precisely what Bail always said. For all his bravery, he believed in hedging, waiting, taking cover from the Empire and his place in the Senate. He did many wonderful things for the Rebellion, but acting swiftly was not one of them. "Mon agrees that it is worth it."

Obi-Wan looked at her sidelong, speculating, "Would we be here if she did not?"

Padme didn’t dignify that with a response. They both knew they would be. Regardless of the risks.

"And after?"

"You’re assuming that we’ll succeed."

His chuckled and she glanced at him, catching a quick smile.

"It is what I always assume, my lady, although I agree there is hardly precedent."

"He’ll be a military asset the same as any other prisoner. If we can contain him, Mon is willing to bring him to the base for interrogation. She’s hopeful."

Padme stopped on the word, closing her eyes.

Obi-Wan circled to stand in front of her. He reached out – gentle as ever – taking her shoulders in his hands. When she opened her eyes, she saw the very same pain she felt reflected in his eyes. He looked old, she thought, not for the first time. They had been the first words from her mouth, meeting him again on Tatooine. As old and tired as she felt, though he hid it better.

"We will have that, at least," Obi-Wan assured her. "Or an end."

Padme smiled unhappily.

He knew that was not what she hoped for, though she would accept it.

Poorly lit, gray halls gave way to the classic and pristine white of the inhabited inner ring of Tipoca City. Kaminoans passed by them, few and far between, craning their long necks in surprise to see humans. No. To see a Jedi.

A small droid scurried up the length of the corridor to them, tiny feet rattling against the floor. It wound itself around Obi-Wan’s feet, as if it were an animal, before darting away.

He raised his eyebrows at her.

"This way."

Padme frowned. For all that her operations over the years were secret, their stay in Tipoca City would hardly be a stopover and, no matter their care, they would leave a trail. She did not like that Obi-Wan’s contact needed to operate with such discretion. It didn’t bode well for the loyalties of the city as a whole, for all that they had suffered at the Empire’s hands.

They followed the droid into progressively narrower corridors, until the city felt as claustrophobic and unpleasant as any of Coruscant’s underlevels. The narrow passage seemed more like the desolation near the city outskirts, light flickering and dim. The droid rapped at a door partway down the hall, reared up on its many back legs as it tapped out a signal. The door opened and the droids scuttled in, peeking back around in invitation.

Padme waved Obi-Wan on, following him with her hand tucked into her blaster belt.

The room was vast, bright in the traditional fashion, but largely bare. Padme immediately turned to look behind her as they entered, thinking to the many doors that lined the corridor they’d come down. Dummy doors, she realized now. This wasn’t an official facility, not part of Kaminoan industry or infrastructure.

"I am pleased you could make it," said a Kaminoan.

She stood in the center of the room, surrounded by holos that hung midair. Her long fingers stroked through one, manipulating the image of a microbe. Beyond her, near the wall, there was a single cloning tube affixed to a large mass of machinery. Padme’s breath quickened at the sight. It was everything she and Obi-Wan had spoken of, the foundations of their plan.

"Not as pleased as I am for what you have done for us, Nala Se." Obi-Wan inclined his head in thanks. Padme did not bother, consumed by staring at the cloning tube. "Are you prepared for the next step?"

"It is what is owed, Master Jedi. I am well prepared. Will he be arriving soon?"

That was Padme’s purview. Her agents had laid a trail for Vader to follow, using themselves as bait. The last communication indicated their success, though they could only report on the initial stages of the ruse. It would be too dangerous for them to try to send her messages, encrypted or not, any deeper in the game. But she trusted them to do their jobs as much as she trusted them to stay safely away from Tipoca City.

"We have a few hours. Perhaps less," Padme said.

Nala Se tilted her head curiously, but Padme did not feel inclined to explain. Her agents endangered themselves enough without Padme giving out information to those with no need for it.

Eventually, Nala Se accepted her silence. She took them through the stages of her own part of the plan, consolidating the holos into a single frame in front of them that she flipped through as she lectured. Much of Tipoca City’s grid was offline or nebulously functional. It had not taken much for Nala Se to rewire it into a ghostfeed for their project, outside the control of the city facilitators and invisible to their eyes. And they would need quite a lot of energy for the coming days. Life support, bacta treatments, and surgeries could hardly be done in the dark.

The more difficult feats she made sure to take time to explain, in expectation that Padme and Obi-Wan would marvel at them. Using residual skin cells was a feat of reconstructive cloning genius. Engineering a virus to target midichlorians had been done only rarely in the past, but never before in a away that allowed the host to survive.

Padme nodded once, agreeing that Nala Se had proven her talents. The Kaminoan closed her eyes into starry slits, hissing displeasure at the minimal acknowledgment

"You have done everything we asked," Obi-Wan soothed. "And better than we dreamed. Please, continue."

Nala Se made a haughty, dissonant sound and then resumed her explanation. She rifled through the holos, pushing several out to the side, in sequence, as she explained the planned course of treatment. The recovery time. The security patrol schedule and how they would need to adjust the electrical flow to this area – and hence the treatments – to avoid detection. It would be swift, though not as swift as medically possible, and once they left Kamino the progress would slow to a bantha’s pace.

Padme swallowed at the time line. She knew it would be months, but seeing the time blocked out in such a way made it feel worse. Had they the proper run of Kamino, it would take mere weeks to complete all the stages.

But maybe she needed the time to adjust to the idea. Ten years and she still hadn’t come to terms with who Anakin had become, what were a few more months?

Nala Se’s speech came to a close. Obi-Wan thanked her appropriately.

And then they had nothing to do but wait. She and Obi-Wan couldn’t even pass the time in their usual manner. Nala Se guided them to the room they would live in for the duration, little more than a closet with a bunk and small attached fresher, before leaving to continue preparations. Obi-Wan dropped to sit on the floor, knee butting against the bed structure on one side and wall on the other, while Padme tucked her knees up and sat on the bunk. She stared at her nails, listening to Nala Se work in the other room. She left open the communications frequency that Padme’s agents had given to Vader.

Padme could feel its staticky crackle, heart jumping every time it faded or fizzled out, wondering if he had finally made contact.

But in the end, he did not bother to call to the city or the supposed Rebel defector he was to meet.

Blaster fire resounded as Vader’s troops blew open the doors, false and real, and swarmed into the makeshift laboratory.

Obi-Wan was out of the small sleep quarters before Padme, before she sat upright, before she fully processed what was happening. She palmed her blaster and slid from the bunk, striding into the lab feeling nothing less than desperate unreality.

Obi-Wan had already dispatched the troopers. Their armor lay in shining white pieces, smoking from the ends. And there, framed by the small door, stood the black husk of the man she’d loved.

Padme walked to stand beside Obi-Wan, her blaster held high. His respirator echoed against empty space, undercut only by the twin hums of their lightsabers. Even now, they were the same. Same pitch and frequency, same glint in this strange place, same guard position as they stared each other down.

But his was the red of a Sith.

Did he realize his real lightsaber was in the room? That Obi-Wan had brought it to Nala Se to begin all this, to test the viability of the idea?

"Padme?" Her name was a shocked rasp. Padme flinched at the sound of his voice. He stepped forward, one hand brought away from his lightsaber, as if to touch. "My Master said –"

"Now," Padme snapped.

Kaminoans were not known for their speed, but Nala Se moved quickly. She stabbed the high gauge needle through the thick synthleather covering Vader’s upper arm, where Obi-Wan had said he was still flesh, and discharged a strong sedative into him. The virus would come later. They could not risk immunity developing so early in the process.

He made a wretched cry as he fell to his knees.

"What have you –" He turned his mask in Obi-Wan’s direction, hand clenching. "You have betrayed me again."

His lightsaber turned off as it slid from his grasp, rolling across the floor. And then he slumped over, fully unconscious, chest still rising and falling under the power of the mechanical respirator.

"No, my love," Padme said. She put her foot out to stop the lightsaber. "I have. And for the first time."

* * *

Droids cleared the debris as well as they could. Obi-Wan and Padme handled the bodies. There was a chute leading to a city disposal unit not far down the corridor – one of the many reasons for this particular location. While they worked, Nala Se prepared Vader.

Padme’s comlink beeped as they waited in the still darkness, body at their feet, the disposal light red as it processed the previous trooper.

"Tracks are covered," her agent said quickly.

"You’re sure?" she asked.

Vader had not jumped in system on a Star Destroyer, opting for a smaller vehicle as per the supposed turncoat’s request. He was a confident man, he always had been. He didn’t worry that he would need back up. Yet, he didn’t simply do as he pleased. His Master knew his whereabouts at all times; the Imperial Navy knew nearly as much.

"I am. His ship is slag. Nothing on the Imperial com traffic about him. It’s a waiting game, but we have time."

Not enough, but some.

Padme closed the link down and continued to work with Obi-Wan, finishing their clean up detail.

When they returned to Nala Se’s operating room, the Kaminoan and her droids had already maneuvered Vader onto a stretcher, laying him out in the center of the room to examine.

Nala Se began with caution.

She took a new sample to compare against the degraded epithelial cells left on the lightsaber, making sure of the genetic match to prevent rejection. She attached devices and took readings, moving methodically across his body as she worked. She placed an electronic tap on his chest plate, using its own feed to supplement her data.

She established his baseline health status, vocalizing surprise to find it better than expected, though the damage to his lungs was significant.

"Many rumors were false," Nala Se told Padme as she observed the readouts, data flooding in. She extended a long finger to a jagged line that indicated nerve impulses. "He is not deadened to pain, after all."

It was as much propaganda as rumor; familiar and terrible. Nothing frightens him, nothing hurts him. All must submit because he will never relent.

Padme could not even say who they were talking about, the Hero With No Fear or the Sith Lord, the Separatists or the Rebels.

Obi-Wan rubbed his finger over his mustache, brow furrowed.

"Is that not a good thing?"

"For your purposes, it is. He is still a man. For mine…" she trailed off, body moving in a sinuous shrug. "He will be in immense pain during some of the procedures."

"So drug him," Padme snapped.

Nala Se considered the idea and then dismissed it.

"I do not take medical opinions from terrorists."

"I am not a terrorist. I’m a politician."

The words were a habit, leaving her mouth before Padme could think. She had not been a politician in ten years. And though her agents perpetrated most of the acts, she could hardly be considered anything less than a terrorist. Revolutionary was too kind a word, though Bail and Mon preferred it.

Nala Se’s mouth pursed as her eyes widened.

"Even worse, then." She indicated more of the readings and nodded to the cloning tank, the disembodied limbs floating within. "I shall do my best to limit the shock he endures, but you are asking for many things. Pain is unfortunately a barometer of my success."

"But he won’t be conscious," Padme pressed. "He won’t remember the worst of it."

"I am not a fool. I would like to survive this and I know what he is capable of."

It would have to be good enough. Padme fanned out the fingers of her hand, deliberately unclenching it, aware of Obi-Wan’s eyes on her. She cursed him internally, wishing for him to turn away, admire his handiwork in Anakin’s med readouts, fuck off to go meditate a while longer.

"Second thoughts?" he asked quietly.

She mustered a glare. His eyes were rueful, his smile thin and bitter.

"I agree," he said.

"As ever, General," she said. "It is the one thing we do agree on. Just do what you have to do, doctor."

"You speak as if I would do otherwise," Nala Se replied. "Now let me work."

Her droids swarmed around her, pushing Padme and Obi-Wan to the periphery of the vast room. These were bulkier than the little guide droid from before, large masses with no purpose but to push aside, to barricade and contain. They would be very useful should Vader regain consciousness prematurely.

But they would not fit on the ship. Padme had no idea what they would do when this was over, the day they woke Anakin.

For surely he would not be Anakin, whatever she wanted to believe.

Nala Se began to cut, blade working with precision as she removed the sleeves and legs of Vader’s synthleather suit. She discarded the material into a droid’s open bin, casually incinerating it. The smell reached to where Padme stood, straight and tense, before Nala Se touched a control panel and the atmospheric controls whirred, pressurizing to disperse the odor. The sterility of her work area was vital.

Her hands wound around Vader’s arm, lifting it up to examine the seam of where metal joined to flesh. It was Anakin’s original prosthetic she examined first. Padme lifted herself on her toes, trying to see more. It was as familiar as ever, durasteel glinting dully. Ten years had seen serious strides in technology, but no replacement had been made. An extender had been inlaid at the elbow and nothing more. A cosmetic addition of all things, to match the constructed horror of Vader's stature. Nala Se lay a device on the arm and clucked her tongue in disapproval before moving to his other arm and his legs in turn. These prosthetics had an unfinished look to them, metal like muscle bare to the world. They had never been meant to be uncovered, as much as part of the suit as Vader.

Nala Se motioned to the droids and one moved to the wall, pressing a control. A ray shield descended and a sharp hiss undercut the noise of Vader’s breathing. She watched an indicator light, waiting for it to turn green, and then changed her simple metal scalpel for a more sophisticated cutting tool.

"You do not need to watch this," Obi-Wan said to Padme.

"I do," she said firmly. She then she looked up at him, voice flat with all the anger she never expressed, "And you do too."

As always, he accepted the sentiment. It was the best thing about being with him; they both knew precisely where they stood with each other, as unpleasant as all their feelings were.

She pitched her voice louder, "A display, if you would, doctor?"

Nala Se swiveled around, eyes sheened with silver by the rayshield. And then she waved one of the floating holos over to where Obi-Wan and Padme stood, the angle from a holocam imbedded in the ceiling. It showed the full length of Vader’s body, detail enhanced. Padme watched as his regulated breathing pumped his chest up and down, slowly. It was the only sign of life. The mask was still in place – it would be until the final stages, the bacta treatment.

His prosthetic fingers did not so much as twitch and Nala Se began to laser into the metal plates of the limb, exposing the wires. She worked steadily, cutting each in turn, pausing at times to monitor Vader’s synaptic response.

She had said earlier that she did not want to induce shock, eyes lingering on Obi-Wan as she spoke. She hardly knew how he had survived his initial wounds, dealt all at once.

"Will," Obi-Wan had explained. "And hatred."

Nala Se worked for hours. She discarded nothing. Wire cuttings went onto one tray, the pieces of the limbs another. The electronic sensor cuffs, the connectors that facilitated the sensory connection between the mechnolimbs and Vader’s brain, those were placed into cleaning solution that flowed red into a disposal.

It was when she began to cut into scar tissue that Padme had to turn away, gorge rising. She covered her face with her hands, pressing herself to the wall as she pushed away the image. She could hear his breathing still; her own in synch with it.

Eventually Obi-Wan touched her on the shoulder.

"I think she has finished."

"For the day, at least," Nala Se replied. She sounded exhausted and Padme hated her a little for the weakness.

The rayshield dropped and all sound deepened in the absence of their hum. Padme forced herself to look. His limbs were capped with stasis cuffs, little droids cleaning the blood around him. Pieces and parts lay on the various trays, and that horrible mask remained on his face. Padme clenched her jaw, looking past him to the cloning tube. There was a visceral horror to it all, the man and the pieces, but she assured herself that it would be worth it.

Taking apart had to happen before he could be put together again.

Nala Se drifted to the exit, to the city beyond. Padme took a shocked step forward in protest, already aware it was foolish. She hadn’t thought Nala Se would share that tiny bunk with her and Obi-Wan.

"Where are you –" she cut the words off. "When will you return?"

"Tomorrow."

Nala Se stepped over the rubble and left Padme and Obi-Wan to the terrible noise and disarray of their plan. Padme stared after her before brusquely gesturing to a droid. They’d need to repair that door and, in the meantime, established some kind of alarm if anyone else tried to enter.

* * *

"You should rest," Obi-Wan said, coming to stand behind Padme.

He'd availed himself of the 'fresher after the long and dirty efforts to repair their exterior defenses. In truth, it was simple. The blast doors had malfunctioned, shrapnel jamming them shutting. Once they realized that, they'd only had to pull out the pieces, mend frayed wires. The goings on in the operating hall were no longer exposed to anyone foolish enough to meander down the less savory corridors of Tipoca City.

"I don't want to."

He laid his hands on her shoulders.

"Padme."

She tore her gaze away from Vader's sleeping form – real sleep, for all that it was induced – and gave Obi-Wan a sharp look.

"I didn't say I wouldn't come with you."

But she had no intention of rest.

Padme followed Obi-Wan back to their small quarters. She stripped quickly out of her jacket and tunic and pulled her blaster from her belt, laying it carefully within arm's reach of the bottom bunk. Her trousers were tight, white synthleather that took a moment to shimmy out of. She discarded her underclothes near the 'fresher. It would make washing them easier in the morning.

Obi-Wan watched silently as she undressed, little in the way of anticipation in his eyes. He'd tucked his thumbs in his wide belt – how he could still bear Jedi robes, she didn't know – but made no move to unbuckle.

That was typically her job.

Last was her hair. She pulled the tie from the simple, single braid and ran her fingers through her hair, loosening it to fall around her shoulders.

The quarters were small. It was a half-step to Obi-Wan, to hold his face in her hands as she kissed him. For every time she'd wanted to be harsh with him, every stab of anger, every vengeful thought that passed through her mind, she'd rarely done it. Instead her kisses were a soft entreaty, needy and fearful that this would be the time he rejected her.

But it never was.

Obi-Wan's eyes slid shut as a full body shudder overtook him. He clutched at her, one hand on her back, the other seizing her hip, and pulled her in against him, kissing her fervently. They stumbled as he walked her back, pressing her to the wall next to the 'fresher door.

Padme worked his belt as he pulled at his tunics, trying to shrug out of them without breaking their desperate embrace. It was a moment of struggling before he cursed and relented, stepping back long enough to discard his tunics, step out of his drooping trousers.

The Force was a frisson of power against her skin as Obi-Wan took her back into his arms. She hooked her leg around his hip and he entered her in one stroke.

Padme swallowed deeply, eyes closed and head tilted back.

"Finally," she whispered.

"You could have had me earlier," Obi-Wan said. His voice was steady, breathing staccato as he thrust into her. "Your ship is far better outfitted for these activities."

As ever, he missed the point. Deliberately.

Padme grasped at his shoulder, nails digging in deep. He ducked his head to kiss the hinge of her jaw and his beard scratched against her skin. It was always an unwelcome reminder.

"You know what I mean."

She opened her eyes and willed him to look at her.

Obi-Wan was flush, jaw clenched. His muscles bunched under her hands and he roughened his hold on her, moving in just enough to change the angle of his thrusts. Padme's breath hitched as she stared at him, waiting for him to admit the point.

It was clear in his gray eyes when he finally looked at her.

"I do."

"He's there," she whispered. Tears prickled in her eyes. "He's in there, Obi-Wan, I can feel it. And we're finally –"

He cut the word off with a kiss.

They were finally going to save Anakin.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

They slept separately, in their narrow bunks. Her presence was achingly welcome in the Force, nearly as much as her touch was. Their few encounters on Tatooine had not had this potential, this fervor of hope that even Obi-Wan could not deny. They had been comforting, in their own way, shared pain and blame bringing brief respite from the reality they now lived in.

There was no one in the galaxy Obi-Wan understood so well as Padme Amidala, though he sometimes wished otherwise. It would have been easier to disappear into the desert without the knowledge of this, without the realization that she felt the same, that one connection to the galaxy could be reduced so singularly and definitively into one person.

He rose first for the next day and settled to meditate on the floor. It was not easy here, at the crossroads of so much pain and death from years previous, and most certainly not with Vader in the next room.

Anakin had shone in the Force, energy and light and a near violent gravity that it had been futile to extricate himself from, even had he wished to. There was little difference to Vader, to the intensity of the pull, but for the sickening nature of how he felt. Warped and brittle and held together by deep hatred.

Obi-Wan placed his hands on his knees, brow furrowing as he concentrated on holding himself apart from Vader. A cold sweat swept over him at the effort. He barely took note of Padme waking. She passed by him, into the 'fresher, and emerged some time later. She gathered her clothes back together and dressed, paying him no mind before exiting to the operating room floor.

But her anxiety became a gnawing worry, a formless anger, and that was enough to draw him from his trance.

With a sigh, he rose to join her, watching Vader on the operating table though she pretended to instead watch the chronometer and time table for treatments.

"What if she's late?" Padme asked.

"She will not be."

Padme's hands were clenched at her side, the knuckles white.

"What if she is? We don't have much time. Palpatine must already sense –"

"You are focusing on the negative," Obi-Wan told her. He shuffled his robes around himself, hands tucked into his sleeves. "And I think you have little grounds to speak on what a Force user can or cannot sense. He is ignorant, for the moment, of the loss of his apprentice. You are winding yourself up to no purpose and I suggest you stop."

The look she gave him was venomous. She did hate it when he acted the Jedi.

Nala Se did arrive in accordance with the blackout schedule, half way through the day and well after Padme had given up any pretense of waiting patiently. She paced in agitation, hands knotting themselves together, and nearly leapt at the Kamonian woman when she entered.

Nala Se's droid surrounded her as she entered, keeping at Padme a comfortable distance as the Kaminoan blinked at her languidly.

"I will begin for the day. If you will allow me."

The droids escorted her over to the operating area where rayshields again descended from the ceiling. From within them, Nala Se turned her long neck to look at Padme. She initiated the holocam to display her work.

"I will need my concentration today. I must attach the new limbs uninterrupted. Do you have any questions about the procedures?" she asked.

Padme shook her head, lips pressed thin. She had not lost one bit of her beauty, but age had given her fine lines that fanned out from the corners of her mouth and eyes.

"Then I will ask for silence."

Obi-Wan sidled over to where Padme stood, dipping his head to speak softly into her ear, "Perhaps it would be best if you checked in with your contacts."

She turned her head, giving him a narrow gaze.

"If you are concerned about Palpatine," he clarified.

It was clear Padme did not buy that excuse.

"If you have no stomach for this," she hissed out. "Then wait on the ship. I'm sure you'll find a way to busy yourself."

Nala Se cleared her throat loudly, glaring with starry eyes from across the room. Obi-Wan inclined his head apologetically and reached out to Padme, squeezing her shoulder before turning to leave.

He had cut Anakin apart and watched him burn. He'd seen more terrible things in this world than surgery, and those inflicted by his own hand onto the person he loved. The day before, watching had been necessary, a ritual he needed in order to come to terms with their plan. Today it would be martyrdom and while Padme seemed quite well suited to that, he had other matters to tend to.

Such as ensuring that Palpatine was, in fact, ignorant of Vader's disappearance.

Obi-Wan stepped lightly through the halls of Tipoca City, shrouded in the Force so that the smaller population of this ring would not notice him, attentive as he listened for any mention of an Imperial visit the day before. The Kaminoans passed him by, going about their lives as he tucked himself into an alcove to eavesdrop. There were grumblings about something, though they apparently couldn't nail down if it was an Imperial or merely an angry customer displeased with their work. It was always news when anyone came to Kaminoan, given their location, and for two ships to come so close together, it necessarily generated interest.

"Probably smugglers," Obi-Wan said under his breath, directing a gesturing toward one Kaminoan man as he walked past.

"Yes," his companion agreed. "And good riddance to them."

The first Kaminoan swung his head to the side, looking thoughtful and confused.

"It's not good, outsiders coming here, after all this time."

His companion gave long nod, head dipping down low. Obi-Wan mouthed his words for him, "We should talk to the city leaders. Clear away all evidence."

The two walked away, content in their agreement. Obi-Wan watched several more Kaminoans come and go, offering small adjustments to their thoughts, though he directed no others to act. After some time, he sat back in satisfaction. Their own paranoia would shield his and Padme's operation here. Of that he had no doubt.

Sparing one last look for the Kaminoans lazily walking down the hall, he made his way back to the outer levels. Padme was not entirely wrong about the ship. There were still preparations to be done, though in terms of contacting the Rebel Alliance, she was better suited to deal with these matters.

He should have known her attachment would keep her at Vader's side, even when it was least convenient. It overrode even her duty, at times.

It was raining when Obi-Wan exited the city, a beautiful sunshower that cast Kamino in gauzy, hopeful light. Even the workmanlike skiff Bail had lent them – _Vivacity_ – looked finer under the sheen of shining droplets. Obi-Wan almost had trouble making out the score marks from turbolasers or the acid burns of leaked coolant.

Inside the ship, the view was far less attractive. All he could see was the city, broken domes that had never been repaired, rather than endless ocean and cloud broken skies. He could feel Vader in the city, the dark pulse of his presence like an unhealed wound on the Force. For all that his injuries had weakened him, he was still Chosen. The Force knew its own, dwelled on him, curved back toward him at all times, and drew the attention of all around him. Obi-Wan couldn't help but look, though he wished otherwise.

The coded frequency had once been nothing more than an endless loop, a warning to any Jedi who foolishly thought to return to Coruscant or, worse, take up arms against the Empire. Now it was one of the backbones of the Rebel Alliance communication network, used for the first tentative ping to a fellow operative, to make sure the line remained secure and create the necessary link. Obi-Wan send one of his many identifier codes and then waited for the response.

Mon Mothma's image sprang to life on the holoconsole not long after. Obi-Wan glanced at his chronometer, doing some quick calculations. If she was at the Alliance base on Oana, then she was quite attentive to their cause indeed. Oana had a somewhat erratic rotation, caused by the overwhelming gravity of its sister system, granting it a cycle of long nights and short, but regardless, it was well past third watch for the Rebel leader.

She looked stately in the holo, though as worn and tired as Obi-Wan was sure he himself looked. Her gaze was steady and calm.

"Shall I assume the worst, or the best, General?" she asked.

Obi-Wan lifted an eyebrow ironically.

"In these days, it is difficult to distinguish the two. However, things progress according to plan. There have been no errors. What is the word among the Imperials?"

"None," she said crisply. As ever, it was hard to judge if that was good or ill. "No fleet has been repositioned, no promotions ahead of schedule. It appears to be business as usual within the Empire."

Which either meant no one had noticed Vader's disappearance, or that an extremely dire plot was afoot in response. Obi-Wan tapped a finger against his cheek in thought. They had struck at this moment because Padme's agents had come back with news of growing distance between the Emperor and his apprentice. Multiple ignored petitions for Vader to return to Coruscant, all with an after the fact excuse regarding his hunt for Jedi survivors. Palpatine's irritation with Vader's recalcitrance was growing and there was a trickle of information leaked that he had struck upon a solution, a young Utapaun seen in his company.

Many among the Alliance whispered hopefully that Vader may soon be replaced – though Obi-Wan thought it was doubly foolish, thinking at once that a new apprentice would be any kind of respite from the evils of the Sith and that Palpatine would ever give up the boy he'd coveted for so long. Obi-Wan's own theory was that the Utapaun was to play a part similar to Ventress, to become a tool for the Emperor so that his favored apprentice needn't burden himself with anything other than attending to Palpatine's own wishes.

And yet the Utapaun's existence presented an opportunity. In avoiding him, Vader had gone silent in the Imperial fleet, looking for excuses and distractions that technically fulfilled his duties to the Empire but kept him very far from the Emperor himself.

Nothing could be more perfect to draw him to Kamino, to hide his absence from Palpatine.

"Maybe he won't look," Padme had said, on Tatooine, laying atop his sheets to dry her skin in the warm noon light. She'd pillowed her face on her hand, brown eyes too full of emotion as she looked at him.

Obi-Wan had brushed Padme's hair back from her forehead, kissed her lightly as he wrapped his arms around her.

Only she could voice such hopeless sentiments and draw out his own ever-present wish to believe they were possible.

"He won't need to," he'd replied. "Because Vader will call him to us."

Every time he said such a thing, awful and true, he hated himself more. And yet it was in him, he couldn't resist the urge to see the anger and desolation in her eyes because he was always so careful not to gaze into mirrors.

"That will not last," Obi-Wan advised Mon Mothma.

"No, but you needn't bring the brunt of the attention down on yourself," she said. She spread her hands, words a measured entreaty, "We are quite prepared to handle him on the base. It will be quite a bit more defensible."

He shook his head. They took far too many risks already by using Alliance resources. When they were found – when he woke – it would be all too easy to trace the ship back to Bail, to figure out the identities of Padme's agents.

"It is best we remain mobile. We endanger fewer that way. If we are successful..." Obi-Wan said, tasting the words for the first time. Success almost didn't bear thinking about. "Then your facilities will be more than enough."

Mon Mothma looked amused.

"If you are successful, we shall not need them at all. I suppose you are correct. I doubt we could hold him if he didn't wish to be held." And he would not. "But do you really think you will fare better?"

"I do not," Obi-Wan said lightly. He inclined his head. "Our transponder is quite secure. Please keep me abreast of any changes to naval patrols."

"Of course. May the Force be with you, General Kenobi."

He swallowed deeply. It had not been, these last ten years, regardless of Qui-Gon's teachings.

"And with you."

* * *

 

Padme was sitting on the floor when he returned, her back stiff, braid in between her fingertips as she worried the hair at the tip. Her hair was shot through with considerable gray and a solid streak of it wound through the braid, but it did nothing to lessen her beauty. The hard set of her jaw, the angry lines at the corners of her mouth. Those were the reminders that she was no longer the girl Queen of Naboo.

The holo showed a great wash of blood in the operating chamber, dark blue among the fainter hues of the picture. There were seams on Vader's legs, healing welts where Nala Se connected the cloned flesh to his own. She was concluding work on his left arm when Obi-Wan entered, a medical device glowing brighter than the rayshield as she knitted the skin together. His right still had the stasis cuff on it, preserving the undamaged nerves and bone and veins, open and raw so that she might attach the new limb.

She'd said there would be pain. Vader did not even twitch as she worked, sunk under the anesthetics Nala Se had administered, but Obi-Wan wondered what he would feel when he woke.

He put the thought out of his head, as he had every day since they had begun to plan this. Qui-Gon would advise him to live in the eternal now; it was the only kind of living Obi-Wan was equipped for, regardless.

Obi-Wan cautiously walked the perimeter of the room, avoiding Nala Se's droid barricade, until he came to stand next to Padme, holo that much sharper now that he was on the correct viewing side.

He remembered Nala Se's command of silence and so said nothing as he watched her wipe her brow. There was a tremble in her fingers that betrayed her exhaustion, but he knew she would not stop until she was finished. They would have only one more day here and that was meant for Vader's lungs. They could not defer the mere cosmetics of limbs until tomorrow if she was to heal the greatest damage done to him.

The sequence had a logic to it, although Nala Se had initially protested the arduous nature. Prosthetic limbs could be submerged in bacta. But if they were going to have Anakin back, chance this at all, they would have him fully back. He would not be this creature of metal and wiring. He would have all the pieces of himself returned and he would no longer wear the mantle of the man who had killed so many.

Maybe these new hands would have less blood on them.

It was also a selfish act to do the lung surgery last. Padme and Obi-Wan had discussed it, gone over the risks with Nala Se. There was an even chance that the act of merely removing Vader's mask would kill him on the table, for all the machinery they had stolen to replace his respirator's functions. All of Nala Se's work would be for nothing. And yet Obi-Wan wanted that extra day – wished he could defer it even longer.

He didn't want to look upon Vader's face just yet.

Nala Se spoke softly to her droids and they finished with Vader's left arm. She rolled her shoulders and stretched her long arms, fingertips nearly brushing the rayshield, before she once more picked up her surgeon's tools.

He watched in silence as she worked without pause, continuing on his right arm. She used a simple metal tool to snip at the flesh, drawing out the nerves and veins to connect with a glowing device. It was a bloody affair and Obi-Wan felt a chill as he watched, eyes drying out as he failed to blink, lump lodged in his throat.

Vader gave a deep rumbling groan as Nala Se worked and she immediately froze. Obi-Wan took a shocked step forward only to feel his sleeve snag on something. He looked down to find Padme's hand wound in the cuff of his robe, eyes fixed on the holo of Vader. Shivers coursed over his body, clone fingers entirely limp despite the convulsions – the nerve endings were not healed enough for him to move his limbs, involuntarily or not.

"It's the medicine wearing off," Padme said tightly, voice soft. "It happens sometimes."

Nala Se picked up an infuser and administered another dose. Vader's spasms did not end all at once, instead continuing in disturbing fits and starts of diminishing intensity. Before they had even finished, Nala Se determined that it was good enough and continued. It was obvious that her own exhaustion was driving the decision more than the effectiveness of the medicine.

Obi-Wan carefully reached down to pull his robe from Padme's hand. She barely seemed to notice and, without a backwards glance, Obi-Wan left her to it, turning away and returning to his narrow bunk in their quarters.

He'd had more than enough self-flagellation in his life. And yet more to come, he was aware.

* * *

 

Padme did not join him during the night. If he hadn't woken in the night to her loud, furious cursing, he would have feared she did not sleep at all, because neither did he find her in her bed the next morning.

She was on the landing platform, legs resting on the curved edge as she sat under the wing of the Vivacity, watching the dawn through broken clouds. Obi-Wan held an arm up as he dodged through the pattering, gentle rain, jaundiced glance cast to the storm above. Of course there was only light on the horizon and none for them in the city. Of course.

"What if it's all for nothing?" Padme asked. She closed her eyes, drawing one leg up, heel hooked to the lip of the platform as she wrapped her arms around it.

"Then we have tried and it is more than we have done in quite some time."

She gave an indelicate, derisive snort. And once she was Queen, Obi-Wan thought.

"It is time," he said after a long pause. She directed an irritated look up at him before turning to once more watch that one stormless, faraway place, so he added, "I shall not help you when the rain truly begins to pour."

"Then I'll get wet."

But she nonetheless rose and even permitted him to raise his cloak over her as they made their way back inside. For all that Obi-Wan was aware the procedure would begin soon, he could not bring himself to hurry back to Nala Se's operating room. He let Padme's nearness be a comfort to him, ignoring her tension in the Force, pretending he would permit any kind of sympathy from her once Nala Se began the surgery. He doubted it would be on offer, from her or from himself.

Too soon they were once more at Nala Se's door.

Padme exhaled heavily, closing her eyes to rid herself of her fears, before she opened the door.

Nala Se looked up from Vader's stretcher. The ray shields had no yet descended. She was merely preparing for the day's work, examining his vitals and the status of the transplants. She looked weary, the normally wet looking complexion of a Kaminoan turned dry and wrinkled. Her skin looked thin, as if it might slough off if anyone were to touch her and the starry glitter of her eyes sparked with yellow and red flecks.

Of course, Obi-Wan was well aware that she was a war criminal, responsible for the massacre of Jedi as much as any living soul was. She had known of Order 66 and worked to ensure it was enacted. So the most he could honestly say was that he did not begrudge her this penance, though he acknowledged it could have been easier on her and still ameliorate some of the damage she had personally done.

"If you wish to say goodbye," Nala Se started. Her voice sounded thin and reedy, echoing against the walls. She did not look up from her inspection of Vader's vital readouts. "I suggest you do so before I begin."

The holo, fixed focus from above, centered briefly on Nala Se's face as she tilted her head back. Obi-Wan was not sure what it was she expected from them in this moment. If it was remorse or gratitude, she would have neither. Perhaps it was merely a respite she wished for – or a way to deflect blame.

If the Emperor were to walk in the door right now, the worst that would be owed them was a thank you. The moment Nala Se turned off Vader's respirator, however, that would all change. She would be responsible for Vader's life. It was a dangerous thing she held in her hands, potential that could take so many forms, and perhaps she was more aware of that than Obi-Wan had previously suspected.

Obi-Wan watched a muscle flex in Padme's jaw as she held herself back. She said nothing, but her Force presence rattled his own.

"That won't be necessary," he advised Nala Se firmly.

What had passed between them on Mustafar was more final than any words could ever have been. There was nothing more to say to the man on that table.

Nala Se moved her head to the side, twitching away from the camera to give him a lingering look across the operating room floor. Obi-Wan met it calmly. Her judgment meant less than nothing. He flicked his fingers at her, gesturing for her to get it over with already and her nostrils flared with anger.

Through the shimmering haze of the rayshields, she began to work, attaching lines that would oxygenate Vader's blood directly, bypassing his damaged lungs while she worked. She spent several long moments making sure they were functional, that there were no holes, no disruptions that could not withstand the bacta immersion, before turning to her next task. Her long fingers worked the control plate on his chest – a long and no doubt coded sequence – to shut the respirator off.

Horrible silence filled the operating room, undercut by a quick, stifled gasp from Padme.

Obi-Wan looked to her, found that she had stepped forward, almost past the barricade of droids, hands balled into bloodless fists at her side. This would not do, he thought, and reached out to her in the Force. He sent a wave of calm, of disinterest and acceptance, over to her and she jolted in place. She focused a glare on Obi-Wan, but he persisted until her expression softened unwillingly.

Her head turned back to Vader as Nala Se pressed a release on his mask. It lifted off with a loud hiss, revealing the damaged and scarred face of Anakin Skywalker.

Padme joined Obi-Wan at the holo display, only a faint frown on her face as her eyes searched the holo for signs of the man she'd once loved.

He was there. Obi-Wan could see him plainly enough, though his stomach churned as he examined Anakin's pallid and sickly features. His cheekbones and strong jaw had hardly changed, nor that mouth so frequently pinched in a frown. There was a great rent encircling one eye, torn flesh that looked like it had never healed. When Obi-Wan looked away from the blue tinged holo, he could just barely make out Vader's face beyond Nala Se, laid out on the stretcher, skin so pale and ill it matched her own.

Obi-Wan remembered a boy from a lifetime ago, fierce and bright, healthy as the twin suns' glow. Think of Luke, he told himself. Forget that other child.

Vader's eyes were closed, but even so, it was obvious he did not sleep. His eyes did not move under their lids and without the harsh sound of his respirator, Vader looked entirely lifeless.

It would be an end, Obi-Wan told himself. It would at least be that and he couldn't say it would be a bad one.

Nala Se placed the mask to the side; it would soon find the incinerator. She took up several of the tools from the day before, those of a mechanic rather than a doctor. A laser that cut metal, a spanner to take apart bolts, pliers to pull free wires. She took apart the chest panel piece by piece, stopping at points only to staunch the bleeding.

It fitted quite neatly into Vader's chest, Obi-Wan realized slowly, more than merely an external control circuit board. It was embedded, wires snaking into his organs, controls and regulators implanted into the cavity.

"I didn't know," Obi-Wan said before he could stop himself.

Nala Se did not appear to hear. She continued working, placing each piece of control into a sanitary solution and rinsing her fingers before excavating more.

Padme looked at Obi-Wan, compassion on her face. A rare sight these days.

"No one did," she replied.

Vader's condition was one of the most tightly kept secrets of the Empire. There had been no way to know the true extent of the damage; nor the lengths that Palpatine had gone to in order to keep Vader alive, yet leashed. But no one else had inflicted the wounds, watched his brother scream as he burned.

He should have been able to guess.

"Your concern is unnecessary and undeserved," Nala Se said. So she had heard after all. She threw an impatient look toward the holocam. "No transplants will be required."

Obi-Wan relaxed despite himself. They had no cloned organs on hand, even if they were necessary, but Nala Se's censure was nonetheless welcome.

She was quick to begin applying the bacta solution. Vader would require a long immersion – longer than Nala Se had time for, longer than the Empire could easily ignore Vader's absence. They would need to get him on board the Vivacity this night. Obi-Wan thought back to his mind tricks on Kaminoans the day before. It was good that he had gotten the practice in; otherwise he might have been rusty, so long with barely any reason to use the Force at all, let alone on others.

Padme tensed beside him as he mulled over just how fraught transporting Vader to the onboard bacta tank on the ship might be before and he automatically reached out to her in the Force. But this time her fear could not be quelled. Instead it sucked him in and his head snapped up, staring in horror at the med holo as a piercing sound filled the air.

Vader's heart was no longer beating. He was dead.

"No!" Padme choked off the word.

She stepped forward, trying to get past the barricade, but Obi-Wan grabbed her by the arm to haul her back.

"We knew this was a possibility," he told her harshly.

"I refuse to let this happen."

Obi-Wan shook his head, laughing incredulously. She glared up at him, fury in her eyes, all the years of pain vanishing behind that core belief that made Padme Amidala who she was: that could change the galaxy with merely enough will. There was nothing they could do, between the two of them. They weren't healers and the only one beholden to them was nearly as vicious a killer as the man they were pretending they could save.

On the holocam, Nala Se had put down her tools. She studied the vital readouts calmly.

"Shall I resuscitate?" she asked.

"Yes," Padme snapped. "Do what we're paying you to do. And quickly."

Nala Se tilted her head from side to side, long neck curving grotesquely with the movement.

"If I did not, the galaxy would be better for it."

She was right. Both Obi-Wan and Padme were fully aware that she was right.

"You need us," Padme hissed out. Nala Se's callous manner dropped in an instant as the two women looked at her each. "When we leave, we will draw the Empire down on us – to save you. That is your real payment and we have yet to give it to you.

"So do your job."

Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows at the Kaminoan, adding sardonically, "Please."

Nala Se spent a long moment – too long, infuriatingly long – considering her options. Then she motions to one of the droids and electricity arced into Vader's chest.

It was a good thing, Obi-Wan thought dully, that the machine components had already been removed, or else the treatment would kill him as quickly as his failing heart.

But for all his exhausted cynicism, Obi-Wan could not deny how his pulse raced as he watched Nala Se work, on edge as he waited. Padme's fingers knotted in his sleeve and he turned his hand to envelop hers. He'd told himself not to hope every day for the last ten years, even as crafted lies to tell himself, reasons to believe.

Anakin was dead. Obi-Wan had never loved him. No one would mourn the death of Vader.

Medical devices chirruped their success and the sound of Vader's heart again beating nearly staggered him and Padme both with relief.


	3. Chapter 3

Vader did not dream often, though when he did it was with awful clarity that shook even him, leaving him haunted and angry for days.

Meditation was oblivion. To focus inward on the dark abyss of himself was hardly respite from his visions, Force given and otherwise, but at least there was honorable truth in that misery. He knew who he was and what he had done, could see the future laid out plainly before him, static and peaceful and deadly.

But dreams were another matter, full of possibilities.

The Sith had techniques for controlling dreams. Vader had succeeded, over many years, in eliminating them entirely – but for the moments when his Master interceded.

Vader opened his eyes to blank white walls, foreign for all that they reminded his muzzy brain of his meditation pod. When he looked down, he saw the flesh of both his hands, pale, yes, but wholly human and pinkish against the stark white sheets of the bed he lay in. It was nearly silent in the room, a quietness that ached, made his ears ring as he strained to hear anything at all and recognized, dimly and too late, that what he could not hear was himself.

That was how he knew he was dreaming.

His sight was not red-dimmed by the filters of his mask, his chest not pumped by the respirator imbedded in the suit to keep him breathing – and yet he felt _terrible_ , dizzy and hot. His limbs felt oddly heavy, for all that they were not durasteel. They were encircled by lines of pain, cuts down to the bone in mimicry of those initial amputations, before the subsequent punishments his Master had inflicted.

He recognized dimly what it meant. He was restrained, the cuts a metaphorical, subconscious representation of the cuffs no doubt holding him in real life. That was why his limbs felt too heavy to move, why he suffered the illusion of muscle pain.

Vader groaned as he sluggishly raised his hands to his head and flinched at the sound.

It was his own voice. Even wordless and formless, it was his.

His hands thudded as he dropped them back onto the bed, muzzily trying to work through his disorientation. It usually wasn't this hard to take back control of his mind, even from his Master.

Vader reached for the Force and immediately reeled. He surged upright, muscles trembling as he was wracked by coughs, nausea overtaking him. Force, his head _hurt_.

"That's not a good idea," Padme said.

Vader's eyes widened and he hissed out a breath through his teeth, hands twitching as he tried to consciously settle his stomach. It was loud in the room, his breathing, but it seemed like nothing to him. Everything was slow and quiet and dead, cold for all that he felt like he was burning up.

Slowly, he looked up from the plain white sheet, from the outline of what felt very much like his own legs, meeting her gaze. Padme stood in the open doorway. Her hair was streaked with gray, tied back in a braid that hung over one shoulder. She wore only white synthleather, tight against her trim figure, almost blending into the Alderaanian white of the wall behind her.

He'd never dreamt of her older before.

But he didn't dream, he told himself.

"This game does not suit you," Vader snarled.

Padme smiled. It didn't reach her eyes, but it looked – he tried again for the Force, to feel her and his stomach dropped sickeningly. He breathed in through his nose, gritting his teeth as he waited out the feeling. It looked like her, that diplomatic smile she'd wielded so many times against her opposition, satisfaction in her eyes that gave a hint to her true purpose.

Vader flicked his eyes over her, critical of the expression. Padme had worn devious expression well, but it was always softened by her intentions, her drive to help others.

"She was never so cruel, my Master," he said. "You have disappointed me. I thought you remembered her better."

Padme walked into the room, circling the perimeter to stay well away from him. She surveyed a nearby machine – what he quickly realized was a medical monitoring device, slowly sketching out a biometric reading of him. It was nearly overshadowed by a large bacta tank, now drained. He looked down to a circular sensor affixed to his breastbone and frowned. He ran clumsy fingers over it, watching the lights pulse, its beep an odd counterpoint to his breathing rather than a control of it.

"How do you feel?" Padme asked. She sounded angry, a dissonant element. His love had never been angry with him, not even at the end.

"Half dead."

She nodded and bent to examine something. He could not look away from her, breath caught in his chest – and for once that was not a terrible thing.

"I'll take that as a positive," she said, expression softening. She was in profile to him, as beautiful as she had ever been in life. The lines pinched around her mouth had eased, the hardness in her eyes vanishing. Something like hope crossed her eyes flicked back and forth over the biometrics, intelligence luminous on her face.

"It is better than yesterday," he admitted. A kind of joke, wild and foolish to hope that she would take it that way.

That his Master would not find offense in it.

Padme turned, eyes meeting his. Vader felt his heart beat faster as he stared back at her. This wasn't him, she wasn't a fake. It was _her_.

Vader battered aside his weakness to swing his legs over the side of the bed, distantly noting the oddness of it – the sight of pallid flesh and atrophied muscle – as he pressed one foot to the cold, metal floor. The shock of it ran up his spin, a sensation unlike any he'd had in a decade. An exhilarated breath shuddered in his chest, itself a strange and pleasant feeling, and he slid his other foot to the floor to stand.

He immediately crumpled to the floor, knees striking hard against it. He leaned forward, hands on the floor, eyes wide with surprise. It hurt. His knees hurt.

"Ani!" Padme shouted.

Her hand was gentle on his back, her presence warm against his side as she joined him on the floor.

Vader gave a throaty laugh as he looked up at her, hand moving weakly to touch her braid. He should have expected no less from Palpatine – to give him all he wished for in his dreams, yet cut him down to no more than he was in his waking life. His fingers trembled, just barely obeying him as he stroked his knuckles down Padme's cheek. She turned into the touch.

"I've missed you," Vader told her.

He bent his head to kiss her and he felt her hands come up, tight and painful on the cuts on his arms, clutching him as she kissed him back. Her mouth opened under his and, Force, he wanted to touch her. He held her carefully, hand on her waist, pulse pounding as they kissed. This was why he didn't dream. He didn't want to remember, he didn't want to wake from this. She shifted against him, closer, and he groaned into her mouth.

Padme jerked away.

"What is it?"

"That is a somewhat rich question," Obi-Wan said. Vader lifted his head slowly to glower up at the man as well as he could. "Given your hand in certain events."

"You look old," Vader said.

It was actually very satisfying. Obi-Wan had gone entirely gray, his face lined with wear and worry. Indeed, he looked older than Vader would have thought, weathered in a way that reminded Vader of the old slaves on Tatooine. He dismissed the thought. His Master had put a great deal of work into this farce, but that was fanciful even for him.

"But you do not," Obi-Wan replied softly.

Vader rolled his eyes.

"To what purpose is this game?" he asked. He looked around the room, the vicious swell of anger he felt doing little to help him regain his sense of control. He still felt weak and ill, over heated and chilled at once. He was suddenly quite bored with this entire exercise. He pinned Obi-Wan with a look, certain that Palpatine had taken his guise. "Master, if there is a lesson here, I cannot see it. Come to a point or punish me. I do not care which."

"Anakin –"

Obi-Wan forced an unpleasant smile.

"I suppose it is fitting you would think I am him. I'm afraid I must disappoint you, Darth. I am not the Emperor and this," he waved a hand to encompass the room, the medical equipment chirping out Vader's heartbeat, "is neither an illusion, nor a lesson."

"Don't be absurd."

"It's true," Padme said. Her hand touched his and he repressed a shiver. He'd forgotten the feel of it, the simplicity of how her touch undid him. "Anakin, this is all real."

"Impossible."

"I find myself uninterested in arguing with you," Obi-Wan said stiffly. His expression was dark and severe. Vader shook his head slowly as Obi-Wan raked his gaze over him, thinking of Anakin's objections before he could voice them. "The technology has existed for years. He never wanted to help you, never wanted you to be whole because he knew precisely what you would do next."

That was true enough, Vader could acknowledge. Already he thought of killing his Master, though he had no doubt that was part of this exercise.

"But you are asking the wrong question, Darth. What we have done is very possible and it is very real."

Vader tore his gaze away from Obi-Wan, to Padme. She still sat at his side, her fingers tracing the bones of his right hand, eyes fixed in fascination. He felt the whisper of the touch, certainly more than he would have felt of his prosthetic, but nonetheless slightly numb. His senses had not yet adjusted, nerves not fully connected and his brain still accustomed to the sensory input of machinery rather than flesh.

The silence of the room bore down on him as he watched her fingers on his hand. He could see the veins, prominent and blue under ashen and pale skin, hear the living pulse of blood that rushed from his heart to that hand. He trembled under her touch, hand twitching.

Palpatine could never replicate this. Her.

"What you should ask," Obi-Wan continued, "is how it is that I entered without you sensing me."

"You took it," Vader said.

His mind caught up with him a moment later. That was impossible. No Force inhibitor they had ever encountered on missions had ever been the slightest bit effective on him. They only dampened the Force for average Jedi regardless, which was why he'd never endorsed their use within the Empire.

Obstinately, he threw himself at the Force only to once more stumble, the nothingness opening before him like an abyss. Shock rippled through him and he sneered at himself, trying again and again.

"Ani, stop," Padme whispered. Her hands went turned his over, lacing their fingers together as she drew him back to her.

"What did you do?" he demanded.

He shook her off as he pushed himself to his feet. His strength was returning, he was sure of it. It would not falter because he willed it not to.

"What did you do?"

Obi-Wan smiled behind his ragged, white beard.

"We have healed you, though you do not deserve it, and intend to save you from yourself. If nothing else, we shall save the galaxy from you and your Emperor. Your mechanical horrors have no sway, Darth. And nature is on our side, I think."

"Enough of your riddles!"

But he was already aware of the implicit meaning. The failing of Force restraints was that they relied on energy conduits to try to limit the natural flow of the Force into and around Jedi. He'd been little more than machinery himself, locked into the living tomb of his respirator and suit. His limbs were his own, his lungs, the weak and biological ascendant again. And so midichlorians once more flourished in every part of his system.

Vader frowned, shaking his head in disbelief.

"It never worked. The Seppies –" He caught his tongue. That wasn't the way he spoke. "The Separatists of old failed in their every attempt."

"They never did have proper subjects to experiment on," Obi-Wan returned easily.

"You!"

He lumbered forward, feelingly ungainly on his feet. Obi-Wan watched his progress with what amounted to amusement, catching him lightly by the arms when he drew near enough.

"They have done fine work," Obi-Wan said. His eyes searched Vader's face and Vader felt revulsion course over him – to be this weak and exposed once more. "But there is more to come, old friend."

Loosing a growl, Vader cracked his head into Obi-Wan's jaw, forcing him to let go. He shivered, one foot slipping in his own sweat as he launched himself toward the other man. Obi-Wan fell under him, surprised by the meager strength Vader had mustered, and Vader pressed his advantage.

He got in one good blow before Padme hauled him off the old man, her fingers digging into the atrophied muscles of his arm and supporting his weight. He pulled tried to pull free and Padme only gripped him harder, hands holding him painfully tightly.

Obi-Wan drew himself back to his feet, moderate surprise on his face giving way to determination as he held out one hand to take Vader's weight off of Padme. The embrace of the Force was ill timed, sickening and awful to feel from the outside.

"I do not see what you thought that would accomplish," Obi-Wan said as he stepped closer to Vader. He brushed his hand over his mouth and then frowned, looking down at the smear of blood on his forefinger.

Vader had not smiled in some years. Obi-Wan's blood on the floor was a suitable occasion.

"Nor do I," he replied.

Obi-Wan huffed an annoyed breath out, helping Padme to manhandle him back onto the bed. The mild exertion of his burst of violence had exhausted Vader, leaving him limp in their grasp, no matter how he wished to fight. His head lolled back onto the pillow as they fitted him with restraints.

An irony, given how weakened he was, and by their hands no less. They hardly needed to lay him lower than they already had.

Obi-Wan backed away and hit a control on the nearby wall panel, ushering in a mouse droid quietly whirred as it worked in a scattered pattern across the sparse flecks of blood that has dribbled across the floor.

Vader's breath shuddered in his chest, too quiet and too loud as Obi-Wan watched him peaceably, hand going twice more to his lip to wipe away blood. The sight instilled the reality of his situation on him in a way nothing else could have.

"When I am strong again, I will kill you both!"

Vader groaned, arching his neck back into the bed as he tried to shake off this weakness. He could feel his heart racing, his breathing would not calm. It was a torture to have his body so entirely outside his own control.

Padme sat on the edge of his bed. She leaned forward to lay the back of her hand against his forehead and he snarled at the touch. But did not move away from it.

She looked to Obi-Wan thoughtfully.

"He's burning up."

"That we are not dead already is evidence enough that the virus works," Obi-Wan replied.

A virus. Vader pulled at the cuff and the energy lash binding him to the bed crackled as it held him firm. They'd cut him into pieces and filled him with poison, then looked at him as if he owed them for the great favor.

He would kill them both and present their heads to the Emperor, the worst of the Republic's traitors destroyed by their own hubris.

Padme's mouth pursed with anger and she flashed a nasty look Obi-Wan's way.

"Clearly. What I mean, is that it seems like it's working too well. He'll fight it off at this rate."

"My love," Vader said. He felt his lips move into a half smile, head tilted against his pillow. His vision was haloed by fever, too bright and unclear all the same. A trickle of sweat ran from his temple to his neck. He waited for Padme to look back at him. His hand clenched inside the cuff but nothing happened. "My love, you give me everything I need to kill you."

She smiled and bent to brush a kiss across his forehead.

"By the time you are strong enough to leave," she whispered. "You will be mine again."

Vader fluttered his eyes shut, struggling to wet his lips. He swallowed against his dry mouth, breath feeling hot and labored. He was becoming delirious – perhaps he already was. That would explain this entire episode far better than anything either of them had said thus far.

It was truly an inexplicable circumstance, Padme's lip on his feverish brow, her words ringing in his ears.

Obi-Wan clucked his tongue at the thought and Vader's eyes snapped open, rage filling him anew. He was listening. He had full access to their Force bond but he'd left Vader a blind cripple.

"My Master will find you," he said. He tugged again on the electrobinder, pulling until the metal dug into the flesh of his wrist.

"Oh, you believe us now? That is a quick turnaround for you – though perhaps I should have expected as much. You were always as fickle in your beliefs as your loyalties."

His tone was idle because he said nothing that he believed. He was simply tossing out the words, knowing they would land all too near the truth of their relationship. The truth of what he, Obi-Wan, had done.

Vader had never wavered, not once. His loyalty to Padme, to his Emperor had begun in his youth and continued to this very moment. Their worthiness of that was the only matter in dispute

"I am not the traitor in this room," Vader rasped. Obi-Wan laughed and shook his head, and Vader closed his eyes against it. Everything was entirely too bright, sounds too sharp in his ears, and his mind slipped against the perception of it all. Everything they had done to him. "I offered you everything. You are the ones who turned against me!"

"Darth, had you anything I wanted, perhaps that would have been a more appealing offer."

Padme's fingers moved to stroke through his sweaty hair and Vader looked at her wildly. She had a peaceful, meditative look on her face, at odds with the hard and callous expression Obi-Wan wore – he thought to conceal his true feelings, Vader thought furiously, as though Vader needed the Force to see through his lies.

"All I ever wanted was you. And now I have you once more," Padme murmured. She bent close to whisper in his ear. "You are a grand prize for the Rebellion."

"Padme…" Obi-Wan cautioned.

But she had already pulled away. Her boots were loud on the floor as she stood, walking the handful of paces to Obi-Wan's side. Serenity gave way to indifference as she flicked her braid over her shoulder, angling a look up at Obi-Wan.

She spoke as if Vader was not present: "The dose is wrong."

"Everything you have done is for nothing, if I die," Vader said tightly. His eyes wandered between the two of them as he tried to focus, but it was a losing battle.

"You overestimate your worth, Darth. To rid the galaxy of you would be worth all our efforts," Obi-Wan replied.

He exchanged words with Padme, voice sounding watery and distant to Vader. He gasped, brow furrowed as he tried to hold the thread of the conversation. His fingers raked against the sheets to find no traction. It did no good and the room spun around him.

Vader felt the pinprick of a needle against his flesh and threw his limp head to the side, to watch as Padme injected him with something. Not a cure because he could not be trusted with that, but surely something to mitigate the virus, soften the edges and reduce her fever. They needed him alive.

He was the Rebel's prize, he thought dimly as his consciousness faded. Her prize.

* * *

Vader woke several times before his fever broke.

He did remember it. He'd vowed to himself a long time ago that he would not give into the weakness, the part of himself that begged to forget. His memories remained untempered and true.

Bleary, hot, and pained, he recalled ranting at Obi-Wan, cursing him in every language he could muster. It must have lacked for coherence, for the one look Obi-Wan cast his way was of amused pity.

Multiple times featured only injections, a cool hand on his brow though he did not know whose, and hushed conversation about modulating doses. They did not want him to recover, but they needed to fight the illness for him – keep it in check with medicine so that his immune system would not overwhelm it entirely.

One time was different. Padme's body formed against his back, arm around his waist and forehead pressed to his shoulder. If she spoke, he didn't hear it.

When he finally awoke for real, he was alone. Vader blinked his eyes and squinted into the harsh white lighting of the medical bay and looked down at his hands. They were unrestrained which could only mean the door was locked. He sat up with care, dangling his new legs over the side of the bed.

He felt whole.

Pain still plagued him, but he dismissed the feeling as irrelevant. It was trifling in comparison to that which he'd endured these past ten years, most often in medical treatment suites – though not infrequently at his Master's hands.

He did not feel ill, though he knew it would return. Emptiness, lack of the Force, ate at him and he forced a controlled breath, mouth twitching upward as he did so.

Obi-Wan and Padme had done the Emperor a great favor indeed. They had returned strength to his mightiest weapon, to the Dark Side itself. He had always been bent toward the ends of prophecy and now, Vader steadied himself with both hands as satisfaction thrummed through him, he could finally realize his destiny.

Perhaps he would thank them after all, before he killed them.

This time his legs held underneath him as he stood, not with strength or grace, but under his own power. He skimmed his fingers down the length of his leg and then pressed his hand flat to the gown they'd put him in, feeling muscle move as he walked from his bed. He could feel the seam where they'd attached the new leg. Even bacta would not heal that scar.

He would remain weak for some time, he thought, even as he drew closer to the medical instruments. He assumed that his prognostic information had been left on display in an attempt to seduce, but it would be quite useful, and he found himself perusing the information on the datapads one or the other of his captors had left scattered next to his heart monitor.

Vader trailed his hand up to his chest as he read, touching the sensor affixed to his chest. It was merely diagnostic and monitoring technology. It did not sustain him.

But he could hear it beep the rhythm of his heart as it beat, familiar and calming as his old respirator.

The bacta tank loomed next to him and he found himself looking at the large, empty tube. The glass reflected his image back at him: an unscarred face, hollowed and thin from the time spent immersed in bacta. Sharp and unkind eyes. Hair, of all ridiculous vanities.

Vader huffed in annoyance and turned away from the sight.

He let his hand fall from his chest back to his side as he read the rest of his medical readout.

Cloned limbs took time to grow, even at an accelerated pace. To prevent rejection, they must have had some of his DNA – a question to pursue at a later time. Bacta treatments were more straightforward and certainly the explanation for the slow and steady breaths that he could almost forget about, naturally as they came, though he tried to make a point to relish each.

The virus was tailored to him, an unheard of accomplishment. He recalled a mission, early in his apprenticeship, to retrieve stolen midichlorian test records. At the time, it had been assumed that they were stolen merely for the sake of creating forgeries. There was a small, but rather lucrative market in selling false reports to individuals – primarily for the sake of employment. Illegal, surely, to discriminate on the basis of Force sensitivity and not within the standard background checks companies ran. And yet investment firms did indeed prefer to staff mildly Force sensitive stock brokers whenever possible.

They'd been taken off the mission in short order, of course, once it was discovered that a bio-pharm firm had been involved in plotting the theft from Coruscant's central record archive. He'd been the one to find the first clue, that the data was stolen irregularly across the database rather than someone just lifting out an entire chunk at once. Perfect for the cross species randomization desired for clinical trials.

Master Windu apprehended the scientists before they could synthesize Jedi DNA for the sake of their tests, but not before they made several viruses. Had they been at all successful in what they created, surely Windu would have died sooner than the Dark wished, for several vials had been thrown at him during his pursuit. It'd been quite the exciting tale, told among the Padawans.

Obi-Wan was aware of the full story, privy to more information than Vader had been at the time. During the war, those mission logs had been locked, forbidding even Jedi to learn what little headway had been made on such a virus for fear of what would happen if that knowledge, the mere hint of the idea, were loosed on the galaxy.

His eyes narrowed as he read over the diagnostic of his immune system. It detailed every medication they'd given him in the course of his treatment, everything to prevent rejection and infection after the mechanical parts were excised. It speculated as to the role of his Force sensitivity in keeping him well, in future recovery.

They did not intend for him to overcome the virus. Ever.

They believed he was as pitiable out of the suit as in, Vader thought, lip curling. They would control him with this bribe, keep him obedient with this illness.

Behind him, the door slid open with a quiet hiss. Footsteps, light and evenly paced. He cocked his head.

"You paid dearly for me," he said roughly. It would be some time before he was accustomed to the sound. He prioritized fixing it, as he would fix all of this. Vader turned, careful so that he remained balanced, and met Padme's eyes. "I am worth it?"

She crossed her arms, frown on her face. She was dressed in the same white synthleather, a briefly disorienting sight. He resisted the urge to ask where her other clothes were, why she wore the same clothes days in a row. She was a fugitive, surely, but not a savage.

"Always, Ani." He thought about smiling, but she continued, "You have always been an extremely valuable asset."

Anger flashed over him. It was comforting and familiar, even without the rush of power that should have accompanied it. He bared his teeth to her, stalking forward.

"You're right, my love. And that is why this game is so foolish – you do not realize the stakes you play for. He _will_ come for me and I pity you for the reward your work here shall bring down on you," he growled, looming over her.

Padme's expression was calm and fixed as she looked up at him. He could touch her and feel it, his own hands and his own skin. She'd kissed him when he woke.

"You don't think he'll be pleased that we have restored you to him? Ani, think before you speak."

The condescension was not new, not relevant.

"Don't call me that," he snapped. "That name no longer has any meaning to me."

Padme reached up to touch his face and he shivered, only barely catching himself before he stumbled into her. He held himself as straight as he could instead, crossing his arms over his chest. But she'd felt the reaction, saw it in his eyes. She smiled. Her point was made.

Unexpectedly, cutting into the tense silence between them, Vader's stomach growled. He pulled away from Padme, trying to curtail his shock. The sensation was swiftly followed by revulsion.

"I –"

But Padme laughed, the sound light and apparently genuine.

"Even Lords of the Sith eat dinner." They did not, as a point of fact. Vader certainly never had caused to take nourishment in Sidious's presence. "Come, I expected you to wake up hungry. Obi-Wan cooked."

"If you can call it that," he said and then pressed his mouth shut.

He had too many memories of burnt bantha steak and reconstituted vegetable mash that someone had claimed even a Jedi couldn't mess up, only to be proven hideously wrong by Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Vader focused on the memory, the chagrin on Obi-Wan's face, the laughter around the commissary table as Jedi ribbed Obi-Wan once again for defiling the fine art of cooking. And then he thought of that man rending his body apart, not once but twice. He remembered the scent of other flesh burning. His own.

Padme led him out of the medical bay, her pace slow to accommodate his weak and labored stride. Standing he was adapting to. Forward motion could be accomplished only in short bursts, it seemed.

Vader felt renewed anger at that was well. His balance and fighting prowess had been hard won, recovered after years of training and modifications. He had personally customized all of his prostheses, backwards engineering them to allow for speed, strength and, above all, agility. He had transformed the hulking mass that he appeared to be – that the Emperor had recreated him as – into a warrior finer than any Jedi.

It was gone, now. Taken from him.

He was again put together wrong, but no tool at his disposal would fix this dysfunctional limbs.

Eyes closed against the bright white hall, against his swift burning rage, he stopped to rest. His lungs hurt, he realized with a grimace. They'd made a mistake. They'd failed. Fools! If such a procedure could have healed him, wouldn't his Master have tried?

"Ani," Padme snapped.

He looked at her, surprised to realize her hands were all that held up him upright, half collapsed against the too-clean wall.

"What did you do to me?" he growled.

Even reading all the files had not prepared him for this. They must have excised the most damning evidence, the better to surprise him as each new flaw in his body was exposed.

Padme's expression twisted.

"Nothing you deserved. Now, come on. I know you're stronger than this."

She let go of him, glaring at him as she waited for him to fall. After a long moment, sure that he would follow, she turned and strode away – faster this time, with no allowance for him at all.

* * *

 

The port beyond Obi-Wan's shoulder swirled with the blue-white distortion of hyperspace; as if Vader had doubted for a moment that they were in transit. Even if he couldn't feel it in his bones, in each uneasily natural breath he took, he would know. It was the only logical choice.

Hyperspace hid myriad sins.

For all that he could use the Force within its depths – had he not been crippled and blind – to reach beyond it was something else entirely. A meditation he appreciated, but not one that ever produced much in terms of results. The Emperor could not sense him here.

"If you would focus, Darth," Obi-Wan said. Vader snapped his attention to the man, renewed hatred burning within him. Obi-Wan smiled snidely as he gestured to the paltry offerings on the table. "Sustenance is required even by Dark Lords."

"Only in this weakened state," Vader replied.

He'd not eaten in years.

Vader eyed the food warily. It was little more than rations, but he knew better than to draw conclusions from that. He doubted his stomach could weather anything more exotic, even if they had recently gone on a supply run.

He ran mental calculations as he served himself a small portion of a colorless and odorless porridge. Months of recovery in the bacta tank would have been required. He'd seen little of the ship, but the engines hummed through the halls. Unlikely that they lacked a dampening coil. No, they'd been upgraded, unsuited to a ship of this size. They were meant to sustain long term hyperspace flight, minimizing the number of stops.

But they still required fuel.

Vader's mouth turned downward as he cautiously scooped up the porridge and attempted a mouthful of it. Padme's features relaxed and she nodded in what appeared to be encouragement while Obi-Wan exhaled a deep sigh.

One stop, he concluded. Likely they ran on less than one refueling stop per month, pushing the vessel to its utmost limits. A muscle in his face twitched as he swallowed the food down convulsively.

"That wasn't so bad," Padme murmured.

Obi-Wan chuckled.

"You say that, yet you haven't touched your own food."

She shook her head and dutifully applied herself, though she was soon distracted by watching Vader's slow progress. He would indulge her, he decided. It was important to maintain appearances. If he lulled them into a false sense of security, soon he would be able to overpower them and take control of the ship entirely.

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and Vader set his utensil down with a clatter, staring at him.

"If you think we have not thought out contingencies," Obi-Wan said, jaundiced look in his eye, "then you have quite forgotten who you are dealing with."

Vader clenched his fist on the table, discomfited by the notion that Obi-Wan could so easily read his emotions and he felt nothing of it.

"As have you. You'll pay for this indignity," Vader said.

Padme cocked her head to the side, eyes hard as she watched him. Her lips pressed into a line and, for a moment, he thought she would speak. Eventually she merely shook her head.

"Eat," she urged him. "You'll feel better."

He had no interest in feeling better, but he wasn't irrational enough to disobey. He paused to make sure his stomach was not in rebellion against the food consumed so far before taking another bite.

They could be anywhere in the galaxy, but Kamino was extra-galactic – quite a journey to go there to begin with. Risking Core worlds or even the Mid-Rim was not likely to be a strategy deployed by two people carrying such a prize. Those the ship was plainly Alderaani in design, he doubted they had alighted there to refuel.

It was safest to remain on the Outer Rim, navigating the same circuit while waiting for his recovery to be complete. And that route undoubtedly included a waystation with fuel, which they would very soon require, if his estimates were in any way accurate.

He'd need to make it to the cockpit to make sure. He mulled the possibilities. Merely asking was out of the question. Overpowering Obi-Wan had already failed him once.

Which left earning their trust.

A fierce and violent anger stirred within him at the thought.

"My waking was an inconvenience to you," Vader said. He looked to Padme and then Obi-Wan in turn. The whorls of hyperspace bled into the small, white room, tempting his gaze. Hypermadness was a real problem among deep space pilots. He'd heard more than one tale of it from the Mos Espa pilots, always wondered what weakness it was that drove those men and women to the edge of their sanity. A long moment passed and he looked back to Padme, grimly satisfied by the worry on her face. "I have ruined your plans for me."

"An understatement, as always, Darth," Obi-Wan said.

Vader looked into Padme's eyes, ignoring the old man.

"This is the plan," she admitted.

To make him hers again. His heart gave a loud thump and he reached for the Force, for the reassurance of the Dark Side, and swore aloud as the backlash from his blindness hit him. He raised his hand to his head in frustration, snarl on his lips.

"Then you are as foolish as you are naïve!"

She rose from her seat and, unwillingly, he turned his head to follow her. His surprise surely rippled in the Force; Obi-Wan reacted to it, giving a brief, cynical laugh as Padme touched his face. She pushed his bowl aside to sit on the table before him, long lashes brushing her cheeks as she looked down at the utensils on the table.

"You remain beautiful, Padme," Vader said without thinking.

She smiled but did not look up at him. Instead she had taken a knife into her hands, toying with the handle as she touched one finger to the relatively blunt tip.

"You didn't notice how I set the table, my love." She at him through her lashes as she reversed her grip on the knife, wielding it as a weapon. "I think you are already giving in. You can't feel the Force anymore. You can't draw on the Dark Side."

"I don't need to," he replied

Vader could remember their betrayals, bright and clear as that very first moment of discovery. He didn't need more than that to sustain him.

Padme slid off the table, sitting in his lap. She pressed her hand over his heart, just to the right of the monitoring device he'd been loath to remove. Her other hand still held the knife. Vader forced his eyes to it, the lackadaisical, slack grip her fingers now had on it.

He resisted the temptation to telegraph anything to Obi-Wan. He concentrated on her, the familiar and longed for weight of her body against his, the gleam of light in her eyes, the red curve of her mouth.

She smelled wonderful. He felt dizzy and knew this time it was not the illness, though he wished it to be.

"I'm already winning," Padme told him. "You'll forget being Vader. You already are."

"You think I was a thing," Vader concluded.

A cheap rationalization. He'd thought better of her. The machinery sustained him where flesh failed, but it hardly made him. He'd never forget the sound of that respirator any more than he'd forget the sight of Jedi falling to his blade. He'd never forget the sheer satisfaction of walking in the Temple, scoured clean of all Jedi and knowing it was by his hand that it was done.

"Not a thing," Obi-Wan cut in. "A monster."

Vader locked eyes with his former master and nodded. He had no illusions about himself.

The distraction was vital. Padme thought he was focused on Obi-Wan, that his senses were too dull without the Force for him to be effective. He moved swiftly – as clumsy as his new limbs were, he could at least swing them with some strength. He pitched Padme off his lap and seized the knife she'd dropped.

Standing, he backed away from the table. She rose back to her feet. There was scorn on her face, and it nearly made him wince, for all that he was sure it was reserved for herself. Obi-Wan rose too, hands held out cautious. Vader felt the knife tremble in his grip and held fast to it. Obi-Wan would not have it that easily.

"You think I was a thing," Vader said again. He was breathing quicker now, an awful feeling. It recalled his youth, that out of control feeling that brought admonishment again and again. A Jedi trusted his feelings, but not him. He'd always been wrong. His vision bled at the edges, gone fuzzy and he focused on the beep of his heart monitor to steady himself. He gritted his teeth as he glared at Padme. "I am a thing to remake as you wish. You are no better than he, Padme."

"Ani, I'm trying to save you. Put the knife down. I know you don't want to hurt me."

It was true, of course.

When he reached the cockpit, he would call his Master and together they would kill Padme and Obi-Wan. First he needed to earn their trust, to put the knife down, to play Padme's game through to the end.

Vader paused as he thought it through, eyes going distant. It was easy to see how it all would progress. And then he snapped back to himself, her words ringing in his ears. He met Padme's worried gaze and nodded to her.

"You are correct."

She did not have the time to stop him as he turned the knife of himself, a wordless cry coming from her mouth. Obi-Wan's eyes widened in horror.

Vader felt nothing but relief when he pressed the knife to the scar on his arm and began to cut.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features a sex scene with some rather serious consent issues between Padme and Vader. It's more situational than the actions taken by either party, but feel free to scroll down to the third section.

Obi-Wan settled into the co-pilot's seat with a sigh and pressed his eyes closed as he leaned back. The white-blue of hyperspace bathed his face in harsh light, making him look older than he was. Padme shot him an annoyed look before returning her attention to Mon Mothma.

"We may need supplies," she advised the other woman.

It was day on Oana, brightening the holo image of Mon Mothma considerably. Padme resisted the urge to rub at her eyes. She'd not slept in the past forty-eight hours. She'd barely slept before Vader woke and between the hurried surgery she had conducted on his arm and the extremely tense conference she had conducted with Nala Se – frustratingly piecemeal as she bounced it through ghostfeeds and intermediaries – she'd had no chance for rest since then, even if she could have scrubbed away the visions that haunted her when she closed her eyes.

He'd cut into bone. She felt sick thinking of it. She didn't know how that was possible. Pain was a human reflex, self-preservation an instinct.

Only a trapped animal acted so violently toward itself, with so little hesitation.

"And you will have them," Mon Mothma said calmly. "However, arranging a rendezvous will be dangerous."

"As we are well aware," Obi-Wan said. He sounded irritated, but he didn't twitch from his reclining position.

"We needed to refuel anyway," Padme said.

She pressed the singular button on the control panel that activated the submenus and trees leading to the hyperlane map she needed. She keyed it to display on the holoconsole opposite the viewport and swiveled to look at it. She was aware that Mon had her own map – it was one of the few items of intelligence they could bear to give her, and even then it showed possibilities and generalities rather than the true course they'd plotted. She leaned forward, shaking hands quelled as she gripped her knees.

The original fuel depot they'd hit was an orbital station above Nar Shadda. There were few places better for those who needed to be lost and never found again. But if they came out of hyperspace now, they'd be hundreds of parsecs away. She and Obi-Wan had argued extensively over whether they should return to the same station, hoping they'd never have to, but eventually concluded that the benefit of Nar Shadda lay in the short memories of its inhabitants. Shorter still when facilitated with credits. Returning would require spending more credits and taking more risk than they could spare at the moment.

But two points on a map created a line and that was far most costly to their venture.

"We seem to have no choice," Obi-Wan said, voice low.

He sensed her hesitation in the Force and she summoned up all her unspent anger, flashing a glare at him over her shoulder. Let him sense that as well.

"How viable would it be for you to come directly to my location?" Mon asked.

"Not at all!"

"That is not on the table, Mon," Padme said, words overlapping with Obi-Wan's shocked and defensive outburst.

"You told me it could be construed as a positive response," Mon replied mildly.

Padme pinched the bridge of her nose, still facing the map rather than Mon's holo. That had been Obi-Wan's summary of events, which she now regretted repeating to the other woman. He'd sensed Vader's nascent escape plans, the redoubled anger and self-loathing that compelled him to act against himself rather than Padme, despite ample opportunity.

He didn't want to escape. That was Obi-Wan's conclusion. He wanted help and the best way to receive aid was to put himself back in the medbay – away from all temptation and soothed back to sleep by drugs.

"I think that is an optimistic way of phrasing it," Padme finally replied. She sighed, shifting to plant her elbows on her knees, burying her face in her hands. Her eyes felt gritty and dry, but she'd barely cried at all. She should have at least cried if she was going to feel like this. She added, pitching her voice louder, "We cannot risk any progress by exposing him to the pressures of interrogation. Not yet. And I will not risk you or the Rebellion, Mon."

"How about this station," Obi-Wan said. He tapped at the controls and the Belderone sector lit up. Padme stared at the marked location. It seemed familiar.

"Lola Sayu?" Mon asked in surprised. "Surely there is no refueling station there."

"There will be if you are kind enough to bring the fuel," he replied.

Mon was silent for a long moment and Padme tensed as she waited for the response. Belderone had no Imperial presence, she knew that much. No one had ever bothered to reclaim the remnant planet after the Clone Wars. The Citadel itself had not withstood the final days of the war, targeted specifically by Republic forces to eliminate one of the Separatists' last strongholds and remove the possibility of retreat.

Padme realized now that Palpatine had not wanted to grant Jedi the possibility of a fortress to weather Order 66 and its aftermath in. That was why they had razed the Citadel instead of capturing it. It did have the very slight benefit of barring Palpatine too from ownership of the Citadel, though it seemed he had little use for a Jedi prison.

He only had the one Jedi and had thoroughly imprisoned him without anything so crude as the Citadel.

"What of the patrols?" Padme asked.

In continuous hyperspace transit, even with the advanced holocomm Bail had lent them, they got little real intel. It was far too dangerous to contact her own agents. It was up to Mon's discretion to keep them informed – she'd been somewhat disappointed to hear that Kamino suffered no invasion after they left, though there was a follow up investigation of some sort. Her agents were keeping her abreast of the situation.

"There are Imperial research installations nearby, but we have been monitoring them for some time. They are not of great significance. Weapons manufacture."

Padme pursed her lips. That sounded significant to her.

"Is there any other kind of installation in the Empire? They hardly have anything else to offer," Obi-Wan said.

"Troop transports," Mon elaborated. "They do not operate under high security, but neither do they ship their wares frequently. We should be able to slip past their patrols to Lola Sayu."

"Bacta," Padme replied. She straightened in her seat and turned back to meet Mon's eyes firmly. "We require more bacta."

They'd already used a substantial amount and Vader's unexpected injury had necessitated they use still more. It was more than most in the Rebellion could justify for any one base, let alone a single individual.

Mon was willing to accede to so many of Padme's demands, but she was aware this was pushing it. She shook her head slowly, holo desynchronizing briefly and then snapping back to clarity.

"I need something in return, Padme."

"I can't promise that."

She didn't even know if he'd speak to her when he woke. There was a cold, tight pit in her stomach. She didn't know that she wanted to speak to him again; she'd laughed in his presence, welcomed his kiss. Sometimes she didn't even know who she was anymore.

Mon pursed her lips. There were stress lines around her eyes.

"We have access to a considerable amount of information regarding troop movements. We do not, however, have resources."

If it was a threat, it was an effective one. Padme nodded slowly.

"I'll see what I can do. Be there, Mon."

The holo winked out and Padme swiveled back to Obi-Wan. He was stroking his beard thoughtfully. She resisted the urge to shade her eyes against hyperspace's light.

"What is the current bounty on him?"

"You're assuming anyone else would take him."

"I assume nothing but the fact that the galaxy is populated with fools."

Padme rubbed the back of her neck, grimacing as she closed her eyes. She knew exactly who had bounties on Imperial forces – not the gangsters one would expect. They weren't foolish to call down the Empire's attention on them. All the bounties on Imperial officers that hadn't been issued by the Alliance itself came from small, obstinate worlds that were too full of themselves to realize how little they mattered. They'd not yet been subdued only because the Empire spared them no attention. Dathomir was one, though Padme doubted they had credits that any other world would accept. Several worlds in the Hapes Cluster.

Zygerria.

There were still more individuals who would pay handsomely for the privilege of executing Vader. It would not be the ransom one could expect from Palpatine himself, but it would certainly pay for Alliance rations long enough to see the movement through an Oanan winter.

"It's not funny," she eventually said.

"Were I joking, that would be a concern."

Her fingers tightened against her skin, pulling on it. She'd leave a reddened mark soon enough, bruising if she didn't stop.

Padme exhaled forcefully and dropped her hand. She clenched her jaw as she looked at Obi-Wan, cursing the ironic lift of his eyebrows.

"He knows security codes. Storage depots."

"Then I suppose we shall have to find a way to make him talk."

* * *

He looked like Anakin, in repose.

Padme had often wondered how Anakin would look as a man – without any of the childish roundness that had softened his face, even at the very end. Older, perhaps with gray among the sandy blond of his hair, invisible except when it caught the light just so. His jaw chiseled and strong, yet tempered by age. She would have liked to see wrinkles on his brow.

Vader had none of these features.

The wreck of his face was repaired, the scars disappeared by bacta. But his cheeks were hollowed and gaunt, his skin pale under the bristle of facial hair just now growing out, nearly as long as the hair on top of his head. Her stomach twisted as she looked at him. He looked too young still. His skin was too soft under her touch. The bacta tank aside, it hadn't seen any light in a decade. The comparison between him and Obi-Wan was stark, even in her mind's eye. One man aged and weathered honestly. Another snatched from the brink of death by unnatural means, not once but twice.

Vader did not look like the man Padme imagined. He looked only like himself, as he had been. In many ways, that was more horrible than the scars they had so painstakingly removed. Rejuvenated as he was, there was a sick, fey look to him. Padme could not help but think it reflected what she had done more than it did his own deeds.

Padme sat on the edge of his bed and carefully removed the energy binder cuffing one wrist to the railing. It would do little good if he woke in the same agitated state he'd been in when they managed to knock him out. She turned the metal cuff over in her hands, fingers tracing the edges. They weren't sharp, but it was obvious that no longer mattered. The knife hadn't been either.

She left his other hand cuffed and dropped the binder onto the crisp, white sheet as she leaned over him. She placed her hand over his heart, watching the device on his chest glow and then dim. She could hear the whisper of his breath just under the beep of the monitor.

There was a part of her that wanted to rip the device off. He wasn't a machine, not any more. He was  _healed_. Her anger surged at the thought of him still tied to life support, of all Obi-Wan and Palpatine had done to him.

Padme grazed her knuckles over his sharp cheekbone and then trailing her fingers down the length of his neck.

It was nothing she wasn't willing do him, just the same. Palpatine had kept him in figurative chains of the Force. Padme lifted her feet off the floor and pushed herself up the bed, into the narrow space between Vader's body and the railing. She pillowed her face on her hand as she lay down next to him.

He was so warm and solid. It was hard to look at him now and not see the same man she loved.

The light would be natural, she told herself. The antiseptic light of _Vivacity'_ s medbay replaced by the rays of Coruscant's dawn across the planes of his face. His complexion bronze and healthy, warm with the sun it so loved. There would be a scar – earned in battle against an evil foe.

He was not this sick thing, wretched inside and out.

Padme kissed Vader on the temple, eyes closing as she remembered doing so a dozen other times, a hundred. Laying in their bed, in the home they'd fought to make together, secret as it was. He stirred against her.

"I have not forgotten that which you have done," he said, voice low.

It amused Padme to think he was trying to mimic the unnatural bass of his vocoder. She smiled against him, moving to kiss his earlobe. His stubble scraped against her skin: a new sensation, unfamiliar and yet deeply wanted.

"Neither have I."

She truly despised how willing she was to forgive. He was a murderer of children, but hadn't he always been? The boy she'd known so long ago was dead, killed by this man just as he'd killed so many others. Every time she had made love to him, it had been with this knowledge – he had killed children. He would do it again.

Mustafar lingered in her mind as she kissed the hinge of his jaw, working her way down to his collarbone, kissing the pale skin laid bare by the medical gown he wore. She shifted it aside, thrilling at the way he responded to her touch.

His breathing was a heavy rasp that echoed against the walls, drowning out the medical devices still monitoring him.

Padme felt a warm, pleasant buzz on her skin as she moved to straddle him. Vader's eyes were on hers as he lifted his free hand carefully, sliding it through her hair to cup the back of her head.

She had not forgotten anything he had done to the Jedi, to her, but she had already forgiven it.

Vader kissed her gently, heart racing against her chest as she pressed in close. The virus was still in his system, cutting off all access to the Force and leaving him feverish. There was sweat above his upper lip and Padme broke the kiss just long enough to lick it off.

He groaned loudly, hips thrusting up against her. The thin blanket and gown left very little to imagination.

Padme gave a breathy laugh. She pushed at the sheet and he helped to kick it down the bed. She found the hem of his gown, rucking it up around his waist before settling more firmly against him.

His eyes went wide as he stared at her, gulping down air. His shorn hair was damp and a flush had crept from his cheeks down to the small strip of skin visible on his chest where the gown's neck gaped open. He looked so like her beloved.

Padme took his hand in hers and raised it to her mouth, kissing his fingertips and then his palm as she rocked against him. It took very, very little before he was arching against her, eyelids fluttered and lips parting as he came.

"How long has it been, my love?" she whispered.

The look he gave her was pure hostility.

She knew the answer as well as he. There was a deeper question, something cutting and harsh that she wasn't even sure she wanted to know: the last time anyone had touched him at all. If there had been a single touch in the last ten years that did not cause pain.

Padme had to hope no one had. For all the torture and mind games Vader implied, even Palpatine had limits.

Abruptly, he jerked his hand out of hers and wrapped it around her throat. Padme stopped moving against him, fingers scrabbling in panic against his choke hold. She remembered this. She remembered this too well.

"Whatever your game, I have no interest," Vader hissed out.

Vader pressed his thumb against her hyoid bone, tracing out its shape as he squeezed.

Padme's heart rate steadied as she looked back at him. She remembered – and she compared. This was nothing like Mustafar. His grip was weak, a testament to muscle wasting and blood loss. Her breath was cut short, but his grip was more of a caress than a danger. She leaned forward into it, shortening her breath further.

Vader dropped his hand as if burned. Disgust twisted his features.

"You're a liar, Ani – but a poor one," Padme said. She put her hands to the bottom hem of her tunic and pulled it over her head, tossing it to the side, before turning her attention to the other cuff still chaining Vader to the bed railing. She touched the bare skin of his wrist and hooked two of her fingers into the cuff, lifting her eyes to him. "You have always enjoyed games and I fully believe you will be interested in this one."

"The terms?"

His voice was little more than a growl. Padme shifted against him, pressing down against his thigh. She did hope he agreed to this. It would be so much easier to disrobe with him helping.

She wetted her lips, eyes half lidded as she ground against him.

"Information."

"In exchange for sex?" Vader scoffed. He put his hands to her hips, stilling her with suggestion rather than strength. "I have no need for that."

Padme did not look pointedly at his unflagging erection, despite the temptation. She removed her hand from the cuff, dipping into her tight pocket for the key chip to unlock it. Vader pulled his wrist to him, rubbing at it, as the cuff fell away.

"In exchange for information," Padme corrected.

He narrowed his eyes as he contemplated the offer. He did not struggle as she pulled off his medical gown – an awkward process, deferential to his injured arm and unsteady sense of balance. She tossed it aside, letting it drift to the pristine, white floor.

Vader looked entirely unmoved, despite his obvious arousal.

"You are attempting to mollify me, sedate me with pleasure so that I will tell you anything you ask. I have no need of any information you have to offer."

 

Padme ignored the lie. At minimum, he wanted to know about the Rebellion. Even if she gave him nothing that would aid his escape, he would gladly take exactly the kind of information from her that she needed from him.

"I attempting to fuck you because you are my husband." Padme resettled herself, breasts pressed to his chest, slick leather of her trousers against his hard cock. "And because I want to."

"I have no interesting 'fucking'," he snapped.

He never had. It was never as simple as that.

With swiftness that belied just how ill and weak he still was, Vader toppled Padme onto the bed beside him and covered her body with his own. His chest was thin, ribs prominent against her bare skin. Padme gasped into his kiss, hands coming up to his shoulders. She could feel his arms trembling with the strain of holding his own weight. She touched the sutures on his arm, the deep cut that would not heal properly for months to come.

Her fingers came away wet.

"Stop. Stop," she gasped out.

Padme pushed lightly on him, sighing with relief when he let himself collapse next to her on the bed. Her eyes went to the line of blood dripping down his arm.

"What now?" he asked irritably.

He hadn't noticed. She had to wonder if he'd even felt the wound open.

Padme's lips parted and then she shook her head – more to herself than to him.

"Help me," she urged him, guiding his hands down to her trousers.

Her eyes followed the flex of muscle in his right arm. It was not the corded display of strength she remembered so well, but Nala Se had done fine work. Cloned limbs were often little more than skeletal extrusions, bereft of muscle, fat and skin saturated in growth solution to the point where they always seemed damp.

Padme pushed herself up halfway to sit, lips against his shoulder, just above the line he'd cut into his own flesh. He tasted like blood and sweat. The sweetness of bacta had gone entirely, like it had never been.

Vader grunted as he pushed her away, grumbling that she was being entirely unhelpful in this endeavor. Her trousers were wet from his semen and she lifted up her hips as he worked them down her legs, synthleather sticking and reddening skin as he finally pulled them off her. He pulled with his right arm just the same as his left. Blood welled again.

He lifted his eyes to her, eyes dark and expression hard with anger. She'd reached out a hesitant hand to the cut, as if to touch again. He took hold of her wrist, tugging sharply to force the issue.

Perhaps he liked to see his blood on her hands.

"I do feel it," he said, answering the thought he could not possibly have heard. "I feel all of that which you have done."

Padme jerked her hand out of his grasp, using it to push him down onto the bed, onto his back once more. She braced her hand on his chest as she sank down onto his cock, eyelids fluttering at the sensation. Padme exhaled unsteadily, eyes on the wet smear of blood she was leaving on him. It almost made up for how she felt when she was with him, how she lost all reason.

"I missed you," she whispered. "I missed this."

Vader refused to give her that much, but she knew he agreed, knew he still loved her. He arched against her as she fucked him, body responding to her touch as he never would in words. He shuddered as she leaned down, hand smoothing over his skin to enjoy the simple feel of him.

This was him. Healed, yes, but nothing new. It was not a construction. The deep incision on his chest was still visible in a faint y-shaped scar. Nala Se had dug every bit of machinery out of him. Padme held the pieces before they were consigned to the incinerator, turning them over in her hands as she tried to understand all Vader had become.

It had been a relief to watch them burn.

Vader hands stilled her hips and Padme jerked in surprise, opening her eyes to look down at him. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

"What is it? Talk to me, Ani."

"I don't –" he broke off with an aggravated sound. "Not like this."

She moved her hand over his heart, relishing its rapid, firm rhythm. That damnable device was still there, pulsing with his heartbeat.

"How, love?"

He skimmed his hand up her spine, palm flat to her back.

"I want to feel you."

Padme's breath hitched as she nodded quickly. She helped him to sit, reshuffling so that his knees were under him, her breasts against his sweaty, heaving chest as she positioned herself. Vader pressed his face into the crook of her neck, large hands spanning her back as she sank back down onto his hard length, rocking against him.

It was altogether gentler than she'd planned.

"I need you to tell me things," Padme said. She turned her head to kiss his temple, urging him to look at her. Begrudgingly, he did, though his ragged breathing gave him away. "Codes. Dates. Shipments. Ani, anything you know. Everything."

He scowled and Padme pressed herself against him, cheek to his and eyes closed as she moved faster. She held tightly to him she came, hand against his rough, short hair.

"I need you, Ani," she said on a sigh, "I need you to betray the Empire."

"You are honest. At least you are that."

Padme choked off a laugh. If there was one thing they had between them, it was the truth. They never had lied to each other – love and honesty just hadn't been enough.

Vader turned his face against hers, kissing the line of concentration between her eyebrows. He was close. She could feel that he was, muscles tense against her, hips bucking up into each of her short, hard movements. She exhaled harshly, thighs quivering as she rode him.

"I don't like this," he said softly, anger underlining each of his words, making his voice shake. "Making love like this. Blind."

He spat the final word and Padme shivered against him.

"I can barely feel you," he added.

"I know. I know. Next time, love."

Padme could feel the electric charge of his attention as it refocused. This was an entirely different offer she was making, a far more dangerous one.

"Promise me and I will tell you everything." He kissed her roughly, hard grip holding her head in place as he bit her lip. He pushed up into her again, groaning as he came. His eyes were a luminous, viciously cold blue when he pulled back from her. "But first you must promise me."

* * *

Vader slept fitfully, as he always had, words coming to his lips alongside snarls, bared teeth, and deep, pained groans. He'd hardly had the chance to live in the waking world and already there were shadows beneath his eyes, wrinkles across his brow.

It had taken some effort for Padme to extricate herself from his grasp. She hadn't slept at Vader's side. She could do many things with him, but that was a weakness she wouldn't permit. Instead, Padme sat on the edge of his bed in his medical gown, cinched with the belt looped twice around her waist, examining her own discarded clothes.

They would wash, she determined.

The door hissed open and Padme refused to look up. She turned her gaze to Vader, watching as he struggled against another nightmare. It was comfortingly familiar, though in the past he'd been easy to wake. Now, he appeared sunk under and Padme could not say if that was something she and Obi-Wan had done with their treatments, or a result of the ten years Vader had spent immersed in the Dark Side.

Obi-Wan cleared his throat pointedly. Padme slipped her feet onto the cold floor, and tilted her head slowly, arms crossed over her chest, as she glared at him. She'd wished for a moment more with Vader, for the pretense of privacy. She would have disengaged with her husband at her own pace, if Obi-Wan had not deigned to intervene. He curled one finger forward, as if she was not perfectly aware that they could not discuss these things in front of Vader, before turning to walk from the medical bay with calm, Jedi dignity.

Padme had no intention of following him. The information gleaned from Vader was absolutely invaluable and of the utmost urgency – despite his long absence from the fleet, his sharp mind held innumerable pieces of valuable intelligence that Mon Mothma could utilize right now.

And if her promise to him would be difficult to go back on, if Vader's desire to possess the Force again cost Padme her life, she would see to it that the weakness driving him to deal with her at the very least gained the Alliance something.

Padme padded back to her own quarters on bare feet, taking time only to shower and dress herself in one of her handful of spare outfits – loose trousers and a buttoned tunic, usually for doing ship repairs or calisthenics – before she transmitted a coded signal to one of her agents. The information she began to record in shorthand to an interface-dead datapad. Her memory was excellent, but there were a surfeit of numbers and designations she knew she would not remember a moment more if she had to wait, and who knew if Vader would be cooperative enough to repeat the information for her.

Nor how much the security holocam had actually picked up. He'd whispered the words against her skin, between kisses.

Crick in her neck, she checked over her work. The white of the Alderaanian ship got to her at times, made her feel more awake than she knew she was, trust herself when she shouldn't.

Padme shook off the doubt and locked the file. She keyed a comlink to the encrypted channel her agent would reach her on and pocketed it. The correct window for a response was within the next three hours and she refused to miss it for something as unnecessary as rest. If they had to disengage from hyperspace for her to field the call they damn well would, regardless of what Obi-Wan said.

And if her agent missed the communications window, if she was still engaged in any of the other myriad missions set for her, Padme would have a solid seventy six hours before the next designated time frame opened.

Padme stood from her small work area. It was next to what passed for a vanity in her small, cramped quarters – though almost everything was next to everything else. She carded her fingers through her hair as she appraised her appearance. Her eyes were bloodshot, complexion nearly as pale as Vader, though she'd seen the sun far more recently than he. She could almost remember the heat of Tatooine if she closed her eyes.

She slammed a hand to the wall to stop herself from swaying. She was better than this.

Straightening her shoulders, she plaited her hair into the single, tight braid she habitually wore and flicked it over her shoulder before meeting her own eyes in the mirror. She looked furious. Good.

Padme found Obi-Wan in their small dining room. He'd cleaned the blood from the floor while she attended to Anakin's wound the day before. He was sitting at the end of the table, meditative posture belying the anger that shivered over her as she stepped into the room. It was a strange irony, she thought. They'd taken the Force from Anakin just as Obi-Wan himself lost all restraint with it. He'd deny it, of course, but she'd felt more from him these past months than in all the years before.

Obi-Wan's attention slid from her back to the cup of tea on the table before him, long gone cold. Padme brushed past him to the chilled cupboard that held the opened rations. It was an extravagance, to be sure, but she'd secured shuura fruit on Kamino before they left.

She bit into the fruit with a sigh and leaned back against the wall, relishing the crisp coldness of the fruit flesh against her teeth. It almost hurt.

"You wanted to talk," Padme prompted between bites. She wanted to restrain herself, to make the fruit last, and to devour it. There was a deep pit of hunger in her belly; if not for the tiredness behind her eyes, the ache of stress and pain from the days since Vader's waking, she might mistake it for something else entirely. She hadn't been taking care of herself.

"That," Obi-Wan said without turning, "was a disaster."

It was entirely obvious what he meant.

She found no inclination within herself to express surprise that he had been watching; she'd hardly planned on it but, upon reflection, it did seem entirely within his character.

"I have precisely the information Mon wished for."

Obi-Wan gave a short bark of laughter. Padme turned the shuura fruit in her hand. The juice was dripping down her palm and she licked it off without thinking. She knew what Obi-Wan thought of her manners these days. A pity he wasn't even looking.

"Oh, indeed. I'm sure his word is to be trusted. With such an effective interrogation technique, who would doubt his honesty?"

"Everything he told me was true," Padme replied.

"How do you know? Did you sense it?"

Padme refrained from snapping back at him, asking if he sensed it.  _Vivacity_ was a small, small ship and Forcebonds were unbreakable. Even with the virus attacking his midichlorians, Vader's bond with Obi-Wan was intact. Surely, with just a little focus, Obi-Wan would be perfectly capable of determining if Vader's information was accurate. And Padme was sure Obi-Wan had been entirely attentive on their interplay.

"I know him, Obi-Wan," she said instead, voice going quiet. "He's never been able to lie to me."

Obi-Wan set his teacup down with a loud clatter and stood suddenly. In two quick steps, he was looming over her, eyes flashing with his anger.

"You have promised him what we cannot give – ever, Padme! And for nothing. You risk everything we are doing with him."

Padme took the final bite of the shuura fruit slowly, feigning casual indifference as she looked up at him. She could barely taste it.

If he meant to intimidate, he only hardened her resolve.

"Ever?" she asked eventually.

That was not the plan. It wasn't even possible, she thought furiously. They knew that Nala Se's virus was not a permanent solution. If anything, it amounted to a ticking clock, counting down until they had to make a final decision about what to do with Vader. They had to save him before his body fought the virus off and he regained the Force.

"You really believe that," Padme said. She ran her eyes over him, taking in his taut posture and flinty, hard gaze. "You think we can find a way to stop him from regaining the Force."

"It is the only way, Padme."

"It's not even possible, Obi-Wan!"

She shook her head and pushed past him to the small composter set into the wall, tossing out the shuura fruit core. Hunger still gnawed at her, but she knew she wouldn't be able to eat anything further. She wasn't sure she'd be able to bear being in the same room with Obi-Wan for as long as this conversation.

"I have been meditating on a technique, Padme, since we first began this venture." Padme looked up sharply at that, shocked. He'd never mentioned it. They'd rarely talked of anything other than security measures, too afraid of committing themselves to a fantasy they knew would not come true. Obi-Wan's expression turned determined, though not less tense. "I believe it may be possible. If he is weak enough, with help, I may be able to strip the Force from him entirely."

Padme had no idea who was even left to help. This was getting to be absurd. All of the Jedi were dead. She'd seen the Temple remains, well before the building was reshaped into the Imperial Palace. She'd sent her own agents out to aid survivors, only to later hear of their deaths. She'd visited Obi-Wan with good news, a name of another Jedi to help, and discovered again and again that it was merely a trap meant to lure him, and others if they existed, out of hiding.

There was no one.

Then it came to her. Padme felt her heart stutter and her breath leave her.

The galaxy did still have two Force sensitives – untrained, yes, but powerful. Perhaps enough to tame Vader.

The lash of anger she felt was as violent as anything Vader had ever wielded against her.

"Don't you dare involve them," Padme snarled.

She shoved at Obi-Wan, pushing him hard into the table. She wasn't wearing a weapon, she realized in bafflement. Why the fuck wasn't she wearing a weapon?

Padme cast about, looking for anything she could use against him, useless as she knew it would be. They'd locked all the cupboards and she found she couldn't remember the keycode to the knives. The blasters were secured in the hold – Obi-Wan had even taken the extraordinary step of locking up his lightsaber, in case Vader was able to make a play for it.

Obi-Wan took her by the shoulders firmly and Padme came back to herself. Her hands were balled into fists at her side.

"Don't you dare."

"I have no intention of seeking their help, I assure you," Obi-Wan told her. His voice took on a glib note, "I have reason to doubt their temperaments are entirely suited to this manner of work, lack of training aside."

Padme raised her hand, pushing on Obi-Wan's grasp until he gave up with a shrug.

"Then who?"

"An old, dear friend."

Which meant he'd lied to her. There was another survivor after all – and yet, in ten years, they'd done absolutely nothing against the Empire. Maybe that was for the best, if this was what they planned.

Padme shook her head, turning away from him. She covered her face with both hands as she tried to breathe through the new, horrible future appearing in front of her: Vader, stripped of the Force forever.

It was supposed to be a good thing, a safe thing. Obi-Wan truly believed it was the only way.

This wasn't the plan.

She dropped her hands to her sides, staring at the blank white wall in front of her. Moments like this, she appreciated Alderaan's stark aesthetics, if only because it meant she did not have to associate the memory with anything she loved. This was not happening on her own ship, in her own home.

Padme raised her hand to her face, knuckles pressed against her forehead.

"We were supposed to save him, Obi-Wan. Bring Anakin back!"

He'd never be Anakin again if he couldn't be on the Light Side. Padme didn't know who he'd be.

"Anakin is dead," Obi-Wan said softly.

Padme turned in place, feeling as if she'd been slapped. Obi-Wan pressed his lips into a line. He'd said as much to her before, but it had been years ago, well before the idea of saving Anakin was hatched between them. There was no return from the Dark Side, he said. Anakin died at Vader's hand as surely as the Jedi Order had.

But if he believed that was true, then Padme had no idea why Obi-Wan was even here.

Her lips parted in a question and he lay a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently to console her. His anger had evaporated, leaving only sympathy and a kind, sad light in his gray eyes.

"It's past time you accepted that, Padme."


	5. Chapter 5

Obi-Wan plotted a course to Dagobah and then sat back in his seat, hand over his mouth. He pressed his lips into a hard frown as the fuel indicator blinked a rapid alert at him.

He was not prone to impulse, but in these circumstances, dear Force, what did Padme expect of him? He could not let her promise come to fulfillment. Vader must never regain the Force. The vain and vague hopes he had entertained months ago as they planned their rescue and rehabilitation attempt had shattered in the face of the cold truth of who Vader really was.

The look in his eyes when he awoke and, even worse, when he turned a blade on himself.

Obi-Wan felt the heat of guilty anger coursing through his veins, staring at the star map before him until his vision blurred. It was a sick thing, taking the Force from a Jedi. He could barely think of anything he'd done in the last years that did not seem sick to him, incomprehensible. He had not understood the galaxy since Utapau, however, and did not think he would begin to now. He simply did what was necessary.

Which was precisely what Padme also did.

Swearing softly, Obi-Wan closed out of the navicomputer, erasing his course as he did so. He rubbed at his eyes, jaw clenched and brow furrowed.

She had bought them fuel and time, perhaps even medical supplies, which they were woefully low on. If any injury came to himself or to her, Obi-Wan felt confident his own mediocre healing talents could see to the wound. But were Vader to act against himself again, that would be another matter. Not only was his health far more precarious, given the virus attacking his midichlorians and therefore his natural healing ability, but the sheer number of procedures he had been through were not without consequences.

Obi-Wan did not relish the idea of laying hands on Vader, of guiding the Force to heal him. His stomach twisted in dread at the thought. It would undo him. He knew that.

His neck prickled as he was joined by another presence; not Qui-Gon, he thought, wishing he did not feel lost.

It was a small ship with extremely limited company. Avoiding each other would not be possible, though Obi-Wan briefly entertained the idea that it might approach healthy behavior. For a very low value of healthy. Regardless, he needed to make some effort toward rapprochement, for his own sanity if little else.

"I owe you gratitude," he said, without turning his chair.

Padme came fully into the cockpit without a word. Her sense in the Force remained flinty, undoubtedly matching her expression.

He dropped his hand onto the navigation console with a sigh.

"What do you think Mon has available to trade?"

Neither his ends nor Padme's would be served if they didn't get enough fuel to actually go anywhere.

"I like that you don't ask what the information is worth."

Obi-Wan lifted his eyes to watch as Padme dropped into the copilot's chair. She looked little better than before. He expected that his own face had the same marks of weariness upon it.

"I was listening," he replied casually. "I am aware of the value of his information, should it prove true."

Which raised another, unsavory question. Would they have to wait for verification, or could they just take their supplies and make a break for it?

"She can give us what we need."

"Indefinitely?"

Padme gave him an unforgiving look.

"No. But that isn't your plan anymore, is it?"

"It was never the plan."

Padme only clenched her jaw in response, eyes growing harder. Among the many reasons why Obi-Wan had hope she would not attempt to live out her fantasies of Anakin with Vader, this was foremost. A fracture in loyalty, in commitment, whatever she might tell herself. Sleeping with him muddied her emotions and brought turmoil into an already difficult situation.

He would someday be immune to the virus. They'd never had much time to play with, yet she was compelled to pretend otherwise due to her attachment. And worse yet, oppose the only means of buying more time.

I should have told her earlier, he thought. But it was hard to feel the surety and righteousness he needed to do that, between the distant, numb space in the Force where Anakin's presence should have burned and Padme's blaring disapproval. That third presence, Qui-Gon, whom he so wished to ask advice of, had not appeared to him in some time. It made him doubt himself.

"I'm not arguing this with you," Padme said, voice low and eyes dark.

Obi-Wan sighed and felt her hackles rise even further. He refrained from outwardly rolling his eyes. Non-Jedi were wound ever so tightly. It was frustrating to deal with them.

He refused to allow himself to miss the Temple.

"I admit, it moments such as these, I find return to my exile seems quite appealing," he told her. He looked away from her, out the viewport, easily imagining the searing blue sky of Tatooine. "I'd grown quite accustomed to the silence and the solitude. Perhaps I am not good company these days, for all those years."

The self-rebuke had the intended effect. Padme's presence in the Force softened, if only a little, cutting amusement coming to the fore. He didn't suppose Padme would stop being angry with him, but that was ever a note in their relationship. Mutual blame, accompanied by mutual self-loathing. Vader does fit in quite well with us, he thought, despite his denials.

"You think highly of yourself to imply it was ever otherwise," Padme said, though there was no real sting in her words. She made a quiet, tired sound and leaned forward, elbows onto the navicomputer. Her fingers worked into the taut tendons of her neck as she angled a look at him. "I'm planning to rob them blind, Obi-Wan. I'll take all the fuel, all the supplies I can get. For him. What does that make me?"

"Well. Nothing good."

She smiled at him.

"When did you get so honest?"

"I'm not, except at the worst moments. I will admit," he turned back to the blue-white of hyperspace, more comfortable to speak of his emotions when he didn't have to look anyone in the eye, "I want the same as you. And I'm glad it is you who will rob the Alliance and not I."

He wasn't anything better than her. It was important to remember that.

"Who is your contact?" he asked, changing the subject.

Padme smiled more widely, white teeth flashing.

"You're interested in the Alliance? You?"

If she thought her disbelief would offend, she was mistaken.

"Your contact may have to meet him," he reminded her. Her smile froze and he cocked an eyebrow at her. "We hardly have staff to contain him, meet with your contact, and transfer supplies to the ship all at once. We'll need their help."

Padme sat up straight to meet his eyes, worry in her eyes belying the denial on her lips.

"They're different people, Obi-Wan. My contact will relay the information on and Mon will send the supply ship. She would hardly choose my contact as the ship's captain."

"You're right. Silly of me to think you wouldn't be transmitting every speck of valuable, highly classified information over the comm and would prefer to make any of the exchange in person."

"I trust Mon's agents as if they were my own."

"Who is it going to be, Padme?" he asked again.

There was a wrathful streak in her Force presence, though it didn't show on her face.

"No one," she told him, "who would be pleased to find out you've been alive all this time."

The choices for that were extremely limited. One person stood out above all others. If Obi-Wan were inclined to feel bad about things in his life unrelated to Anakin, at this point, he might have questioned Padme further. However, thankfully, he only had so much ill-will towards himself and it was entirely taken up by the boy he'd failed so direly.

Instead, Obi-Wan pretended he didn't know to whom she referred. His concerns about loyalty and competence in the Alliance had been overshadowed. He stretched as he rose, as if he was ceding the cockpit to her for reasons other than their conversation. He could use some meditation, he decided. Guidance if only Qui-Gon would hear him and come to his aid.

"I suppose I shall leave you to it."

"Mon knows what she's doing, Obi-Wan. She'll send her most capable and most reliable." Padme didn't address the bare fact that her own agents were in that group. Nor why she would want them so far away from Vader; the implication of her agent's identity explained that quite clearly. "Trust me on that."

Obi-Wan knew he could do that much, at least. It only meant that he needed time to strength his resolve and, perhaps, to think of a decent excuse for being alive.

* * *

 

Obi-Wan found his way back to his small, ascetic crew quarters. The white of the Alderaani ship and the stiff, hard bunk were entirely too familiar at this point. He felt a twinge of regret as he settled against the wall, legs bent so they wouldn't bump against the door opposite of him. He'd never needed much aid to delve into meditation , neither focusing tool nor physical comfort, nor even solitude – though he had that in spades, these days. The only distraction that haunted him now was thought of the future.

It had been easier, he reflected, to leave the war against the Empire to Padme when the harsh desert was laid out before him. Easier to push away the incessant, mortal need to worry about what would soon come to pass when he was trapped in the past, watching a boy with gleaming blond hair and a light that shone in the Force, regardless of the techniques Obi-Wan quietly taught to his caretakers to pass on to him to dampen it. He had a purpose. A penance to observe and a plan.

But he no longer waited. He found himself longing for the simplicity of the desert hut he hated, the stark loneliness and the punishing heat of the suns.

At least there he could be certain he was not doing the wrong thing, if only because he was not yet doing anything at all.

Obi-Wan pushed his fingers through his hair, eyes downcast as he sought meditative peace. This he could still do.

Over the past months, he'd meditated deeply on all they had done, every commission that was not quite a crime, yet could hardly be characterized as much better. He sought the presence that haunted him in the desert. Qui-Gon had been so much closer then, more than the dead end path Obi-Wan couldn't help but trace and retrace mentally, feeling stifled and cut off.

There had been days where Obi-Wan had caught sight of the man, just out of the corner of his eyes. He'd turned, hair on his neck prickling, sure that this time he would see him if he just moved quickly enough. Almost. Whispers on the wind and shimmering illusions no more real than any other tricks the desert played. And yet Obi-Wan had felt guided. That path had appeared before him and each day he'd pressed forward, further along it, feeling like he would see meet with his Master again and fully understand what it was Qui-Gon wished to teach him.

Until Kamino.

He'd not expected that. Their plan had been plotted under the Tatooine sky, with Qui-Gon's voice just beyond Obi-Wan's hearing – present if too faint to understand. It'd seemed an endorsement then, as invigorating as anything he and Padme did together, with their words or plans or mouths.

The further into this venture he and Padme had traversed, the more distant Qui-Gon had become, though the Force itself remained as near as ever. He was not bereft of what he needed to complete their plan, only the surety that it was the right thing to do.

Padme wished for the impossible. There was no resurrection of the dead. Anakin died, if not on Coruscant, under vows hastily given to Palpatine, then in the fires of Mustafar. The Emperor constructed Vader out of his burnt remains and Obi-Wan could only hope – only believe – that it was possible to build another man, equally new and strange, from the remnants of Vader.

The effect of losing the Force had never been studied on a Dark Sider, but there was some precedent among the Jedi. Obi-Wan remembered a thesis presentation early in his apprenticeship, a scholarly examination of three Jedi who had lost the Force for various reasons throughout galactic history, including having it stolen by Sith magic. They were hardly themselves after, losing not only their vocation, but some essential piece of their personhood. The Force was part of the vital essence of every being, even those who could not touch it directly, shaping their personalities as much as their fate. For a Jedi, it was not the loss of a sense. It was a loss of all senses.

The cases were studies in tragedy, the Jedi scholar concluded.

For Vader, for the galaxy, Obi-Wan had come to believe it would be a triumph. It needed to be. Vader would become a new man, this time made from a monster. Or something resembling a man, in any case.

Better than the day before, Obi-Wan told himself. Whatever pain he saw in Vader's eyes, whatever he and Padme had inflicted on him, it was better than what had occurred the day before – going back years, to everything done by Palpatine, to the swift cuts of Obi-Wan's sure blade.

The alert on his door chimed and Obi-Wan dropped his hands into his lap, head coming up sharply, before he climbed cautiously to his feet.

It reflected poorly on Obi-Wan that, despite being blocked from the Force, Vader could still surprise him. And he knew with bone deep surety that it was Vader. The medbay was locked. Padme had left Vader cuffed once more to his bed. He was weak and ill, his limbs still not quite obedient to his commands. But Padme did not bother with the door chime and there was only one man in the galaxy who felt like Vader in the Force.

Even now, cut off from it, the Force yearned for him.

Obi-Wan took two steps forward, drawn just as the Force was, before he realized what he was doing. He straightened and frowned. There was nothing compelling him to speak to Vader, just now, and upon consideration, he thought there was little to gain from the conversation. Finding time to compose himself and summon up a new stratagem for dealing with the Sith Lord, now that Padme had taken their old, measured approach and thrown it on the ground, that was certainly a more appealing prospect.

He's reaching out to you. It took Obi-Wan a long moment to decide the thought must have been him, even if he wished it to belong to Qui-Gon. He shook his head, casting away all doubts.

The situation before him was what he had to deal with and hiding from Vader, hoping he just decided to go away because Obi-Wan wasn't home, was beyond preposterous.

Obi-Wan flicked his fingers, using the Force to open the door.

Darth Vader stood on the other side of the door, his good hand braced on the door frame. He looked better than last Obi-Wan had seen him, just hours before on the security holo.

"I see you found the depilatory cream," Obi-Wan said. He stepped back from the door, gesturing sharply for the other man to enter. He expected a shambling, weak gait, but Vader walked the meager half pace into the room with surprising steadiness. Obi-Wan closed the door after him and crossed his arms, leaning against it to create distance in the small space. "And applied it to your face. Well done."

Vader had not mastered expressions. His familiar face remained chillingly flat; a parody of Jedi calm. However, there was puzzlement in his Force presence as he gazed back at Obi-Wan.

"You may cease your condescension. It does not even make sense. I applied it to my face as opposed to what?" he asked. He tried to impart some kind of menace to his words and yet, for once, his anger failed him.

"As opposed to eating it," Obi-Wan snapped in irritation.

He recalled the vivid and burnt yellow of Anakin's eyes, pain and rage consuming all that was left of him. Vader was bereft of the Force and thus without the Dark Side. The scars were plain on his Force presence, subdued as it now was, regardless of how his body had been washed of injury and disfigurement. Obi-Wan hesitated to examine him fully – in time he would have to if he was to enact his plan to strip Vader of the Force permanently.

But right now, what he saw was an echo of the boy he trained, in Vader's clear blue eyes and that immense, dangerous, entirely unwelcome sense of power.

Vader had indeed cleaned himself up well, using the cream to scour himself of the stubble grown in the time since Padme repaired the damage he'd inflicted on himself, as well as tracking down the clothing she'd furnished the medbay with. Despite her outward demeanor, it seemed she did still have the remnants of a sense of humor. He did not think Vader would otherwise choose the faded and pale red of his tunic, nor the off white sash tied in place of a proper obi.

His feet remained unshod, toes curling slightly against the cold floor.

"There was purpose to my actions," Vader replied stiffly.

Of that, Obi-Wan was entirely sure. A propensity for self-harm was not likely to be characteristic of the Empire's preeminent warrior. He wished to make the point that he would not be bought or controlled, that he wanted nothing they offered. Instead, Obi-Wan felt Vader had tipped his hand, already admitting that he needed their help well beyond physical healing.

A man did not cut into himself because he was free; only because he wished to be and had become half mad with desperation.

Obi-Wan could give him that, at least. It would be a release from Palpatine, the only way to fully sunder a Force bond while both parties still lived.

"Oh? Do tell."

"Testing the limits of this facility." He crossed his arms over his chest, gaze steady. "Apparently to the breaking point – or else I do not think your companion would have plied me so."

Obi-Wan felt the mildest of amusement at that statement.

"My companion? Why, just earlier she was 'my love', was she not?"

He admitted he'd hoped to shock Vader, to disgust him. The revelation that he and Padme had been watched during their little conjugal visit was apparently nothing of the sort to Vader.

"When I speak to her, yes. Despite all she has done," Vader replied.

Obi-Wan felt a stirring of pity. That obstinate set to Vader's jaw was familiar, but not the look in his eyes: dead and emotionless. He'd slept, more in these past months than any other time in his life, Obi-Wan was sure. He nonetheless looked exhausted, eyes shadowed.

Jerkily, he gestured to his bunk.

"And I will not see you undo it. Sit before you fall over. Who knows how well that arm is attached. I'll not have it come off on my floor." Obi-Wan added, muttering, "Blood everywhere."

Vader was tired enough to oblige.

"She has done her work well," Vader said.

Obi-Wan did not restrain his desire to roll his eyes. Even if she hadn't promised Vader the Force back in return for questionable intelligence – and, as Vader noted, made it quite explicit that they were in dire straits and needed that information to begin with – she'd reinjured Vader on the very same arm she had diligently repaired. Even now, it hung limply under the thin shirt Vader wore, fabric bunched and constricted around the bandage.

"Oh, indeed. Was there some matter you wished to discuss with me, or did you just want to show off your abilities slicing the medbay door?"

He actually would not put it past Vader.

All the things he should do if he truly wished to escape, hiding his health and recovery, playing at docile until the opportune moment arrived for him to strike, were apparently beyond him. Vader was a rational man. Despite everything, he was still that. There was no explanation of his campaigns to purge the galaxy of the remaining Jedi and smoke out the small enclaves of rebels against the Empire if Obi-Wan allowed himself to believe Vader was nothing more than an animal. He was cunning, his stratagems as brilliant as they were now brutal.

However, even he would not feint this way to gain Obi-Wan's trust. It was too complex a game. Therefore, his aim was more straightforward. He wished for what he'd always wanted, ever since he was a boy: praise.

"That was a foolhardy move," Obi-Wan told Vader. "You reveal too much and to no gain."

"It is not. And do not think for one second I underestimate you. Kidnapping me, devising this … obscene treatment, stealing me away from the Force." Obi-Wan could not help but note the phrasing, nor its accuracy. The Force itself might well wreak retribution on him for what he had done, he was aware. "Stitch dead limbs to my body. Make me _sick_. I know all that you are capable of, more than I ever dreamed. And I do not believe you have for one moment forgotten my own abilities."

Vader's hand clenched into the sheets of Obi-Wan's bunk, perilously close to the pillow that Padme had lain on only days before. He doubted somewhat Padme would return to his bed, though he had been wrong in the past about that.

"I don't need to prove a single thing to you," Vader concluded, eyes narrowing.

"Those limbs, by the way, are hardly dead. And they were rather expensive, so if you would refrain from damaging them further, I'd appreciate it."

The jab did not land. Vader's Force presence turned contemplative, serious, and he only nodded in response.

Obi-Wan remembered a boy, freed from slavery and just barely initiated as a Jedi, joking about how expensive he must be now. A pod racing champion and Jedi was surely worth a lot more than a mere slave. Obi-Wan understood now that it hadn't truly been a joke, nor a servile embrace of his previous, demeaning station in life. Anakin had merely asked for a confirmation of security in the terms he knew.

He remembered his own response, anger and disgust. An early failure.

"Substantially more expensive than you old suit, I daresay," Obi-Wan added, watching Vader carefully. "Rather inconsiderate of Palpatine, outfitting you with something substandard. Although, I suppose there was a trade off in terms of appearance."

"It served his purposes."

"And yours?"

Vader's gaze sharpened as he looked up at Obi-Wan. There was a hint of a smile, the memory of it, on his lips.

"I serve his purposes as well."

Obi-Wan felt a sickening chill sweep over him. The fervency in his eyes as he failed to answer the question transformed Vader's face. He looked far younger than his years, too like Anakin and Luke, and yet nothing like them at all.

"He's not looking for you."

"He knows he does not need to."

Obi-Wan pressed his lips into a thin line. It was a provocation and a clumsy one. Vader had made no move toward escape. Indeed, having sliced the door to the medbay, he had walked under his own power to Obi-Wan's own quarters, rather than the cockpit. Yes, there was a tremble to Vader's hand as it rested on Obi-Wan's bunk – weakness he could not will away – and sweat beading on his brow. But Obi-Wan would not bet against his violent desperation if he truly pitted it against their security measures.

An irony, of sorts, that they would meet with the Alliance at Lola Sayu. It had been the only place in the galaxy that could contain a Jedi against his or her will. Even had the Citadel not been razed, Obi-Wan dared not imprison Vader in the long term. His only hope lay in persuasion. In getting Vader to want to stay.

Subdue him first, Obi-Wan told himself. Remove the Force from him permanently. In time, he will become accustomed to his new life. He will stop fighting it.

And perhaps Obi-Wan too would stop fighting, stop feeling ill at the idea.

"Why have you brought me here?" Vader asked suddenly, drawing Obi-Wan from his thoughts.

It was a kind of relief, looking into his face, taut with anger. His breathing was just slightly too fast, cheeks flushed. A sign of the virus, and Obi-Wan couldn't help his gaze trailing from Vader's face down to the monitoring device just visible under the folds of his tunic. He watched the light on it blink as Vader breathed in and out.

"You know the consequences," Vader hissed out. "What I will do to you. What do you gain from this?"

Obi-Wan smiled wryly and lifted his eyes back to Vader's face. There was confusion in his eyes, a vulnerability Obi-Wan had to take as a sign that their measures were indeed effective. Perhaps Vader would never be Anakin, but he might be someone. A person rather than a monster.

"Nothing. A dejarik piece out of play."

Vader growled and lunged up from the bed. He may not have had power or control, but he did still have height – they could have done otherwise, Obi-Wan supposed, but he would have looked rather lopsided. Vader bore down on him, pushing him back to the wall of his quarters only a few paces away.

"That's not it. You brought me here. You did these _things_ to me. What is your game?"

Vader's hands were braced on the wall, body close to Obi-Wan's.

He didn't know what he had imagined of the other man. Machinery was not always cold. It ran hot. Skin blistered at the touch of heated metal, flesh seared off of bone. To think Vader was more machine than man did not excuse the fallacy he had let himself fall prey to, the belief that he was no man at all, that all humanity had burned out of him.

Hadn't he already seen differently? The expression on Vader's face as Padme kissed him, caught only incidentally by the security holos. That whispered word that he feared to say now, not her name, but the appellation even more forbidden than wife: beloved.

He expected to feel nothing when he looked up at Vader.

Obi-Wan had not thought of body heat or of power, leashed but not yet stripped from the man. He had not thought of the raw look in Vader's eyes that reminded him of another man, the dead man he knew he could not cobble back together out of parts.

"Is it this?" Vader asked. There was disgust in his voice. His hand fumbled at Obi-Wan's robes, pushing aside the neckline to feel his pulse racing. "What I am to you both?"

It was enough to remind Obi-Wan of the sheer anger he'd felt at Padme earlier. He'd not let himself become more of a hypocrite that he already was.

He rolled his eyes at Vader and, with two fingers, brushed Vader's hand off of him.

"You are nothing, Darth. That is what you have made yourself and all the reason you did it. But 'my companion' thinks you have value. Her indiscretions aside, I do trust in her intellect. You will be of use to us, what you say now and, in the future, what you will do."

Hurt – not imagined, though Obi-Wan wished it were – flashed in Vader's blue eyes. His lip trembled just a moment as he clenched his jaw and then, with grace that felt like a punch to the gut, he turned on one foot and stalked from Obi-Wan's room.

Obi-Wan sagged against the wall.

Vader recovered too quickly. It was all happening too quickly.

* * *

 

The rendezvous was several hours away. Padme somehow found opportunity to sleep – in her own quarters. It was a relief to see her eschew Vader's bed and his own. A further relief to feel that subtle crimp in the Force relax. She did not weigh greatly on the fabric of the Force, but the tension she felt, the miserable insomnia she excused merely as necessary alertness, did hum in the back of Obi-Wan's mind. Perhaps moreso because he looked for it, worried for her.

Vader tinkered in the medbay. Obi-Wan looked away from the security holo, as disturbed by the familiar sight as he was bored by it. There was little in the way of weaponry in the room. No laser scalpels to repurpose and no bombs to cobble together. In any case, Vader was poking at the monitoring device on his chest. No doubt to extract further information about the viral load he carried for when Padme inevitably broke her promise to restore the Force to him.

And it was inevitable.

Obi-Wan focused in on the thought as he leaned back against the cargo bay wall. He was pretending Vader had not shaken him, that he could not feel the other man's impression in his own room, that he'd not been rousted from it. Meditation had not been accomplished, therefore a change of venue was in order. As simple as that. He sat with his knees together, toes curled under against the floor. It was a standard ready pose, for learning and meditation. Something he did not believe would ever leave him.

He looked out across the small cargo area, stacked high with boxes. They carried an eclectic array of goods. Enough to barter with if they had to make landfall at an unfamiliar port, but nothing that would raise suspicion. Wines and silks, a box of reasonably well made data pads. Seeds of a hearty grass good for animal feed.

In his hut on Tatooine, he had far more of worth. Ilum crystals and a lightsaber he dared not touch, not even in reminiscence. They would one day be passed to Luke and Leia, regardless of the outcome of their little experiment with the twins' father.

He tried not to think of them often. It felt almost a disrespect for Padme if he dwelled on what he'd seen of Luke, small face tilted up toward the suns, hand shading his luminously blue eyes as his attention drifted from Owen's lectures. He had some mechanical affinity and was quite handy at repairing the vaporators, from what Obi-Wan could glean, but he had no great interest in it. His heart was reserved only for flight itself. Leia he knew less of. It was too great a danger for Bail to communicate with him. He did not know if Bail broke that rule for Padme, if she willingly subjected herself to tales of another raising her child.

He suspected not.

The virus, he decided. And the future spun out from that. He needed to center his meditations on that. Luke and Leia, real as they were, could not be in his thoughts right now. He did hope for Vader, much though he tried to deny it, but given the context of the twins, it could only end in heartache. That Vader could ever be restored to them was beyond farfetched. He did not wish them to ever know the cost of dismantling him or his Empire. Thinking about them and how they would react to their father could bias his actions, one way or another. Rekindle the anger he thought he'd left to die on Mustafar.

And further, there was serious danger to them if he thought too much of them, now of all times. Despite his words, he knew the Emperor searched for Vader. A blocked Force bond was not a cut bond. Given enough time and enough anger, the Emperor might well find a way to track Vader – or in his searching, find the Force signatures that most resembled his.

Obi-Wan refused to help that along by tainting the Force with the idea of who the twins were.

He calmed himself and set the regrets and anxieties swirling through his mind aside. They were the very reason he needed advice, yet he knew they were no way to court Qui-Gon's attention. He'd never liked it when Obi-Wan fretted.

The Force was as dank and unpleasant as any time in the past ten years. There had been a pall over the Force during all of the Clone Wars, though the sparks brightness the Jedi cast illuminated enough for Obi-Wan to pretend it was merely the war and nothing worse at hand. He had vague memories of a better time. His childhood at the Temple did not taste of this bitterness. He knew the Jedi had already begun to lose favor with the Force by then. It did not act over such short time periods. Their downfall had been centuries in the making, with seeds sown by Darth Bane himself, Obi-Wan was quite sure.

But it had been brighter, then. The Force let him breath and did not press on his chest, oppressively dark.

Another reason not to raise the twins in the Force, he thought before he could help himself. They did not deserve to grow up with this twisted idea of what the Force was, of what the galaxy was. They deserved the shining Temple and gracious, loving Force. It was nothing less than cruelty that Vader denied it to them.

The thought kicked up a dissonant eddy in the Force, meaning quite apparent, wordless as it was.

Obi-Wan could not deny Vader the Force and wish its blessings on his children. He did not have the right.

He pushed the thought aside stridently. Right no longer had any meaning. If she did come, if Padme's agent really was Ahsoka, he thought, perhaps he wouldn't need to detour to Dagobah at all. She had enough power to help Obi-Wan set the galaxy to right, strip Vader of the Force and in doing save him.

He felt a violent twist in his stomach, even as he thought it.

"What am I doing?" Obi-Wan whispered to himself.

He cracked his eyes back open. There was no peace in the Force, no answers about the path he was on. And certainly no help.

Despite himself, his attention was drawn back to the holo of Vader. He had no tools to speak of, but had dismantled the monitoring device just the same and now examined the pieces in turn. Obi-Wan sighed loudly and settled in to watch.

Some things were ever the same.

* * *

 

Vader was looking peaky. His hands were limp, fingers unflexed, in front of him. His shoulder butted the wall in the corridor near the airlock, giving away the weakness he felt. Even he could not pretend otherwise.

"Are the binders too tight?" Obi-Wan asked. They hardly needed to cut off circulation. Those hands were difficult to come by, after all.

Vader shook his head silently, turning to rest his forehead on the wall. Perhaps it felt cool enough to ease his fever.

At least it was not sullen anger fueling his silence. It seemed he could not muster that much at the moment, to Obi-Wan's great relief. He'd not looked forward to managing Vader's irascible temper as they met with the Alliance agent.

Padme turned from the sealed transparisteel hatch, angling a concerned look back at Vader. He did not meet her gaze.

Through the airlock, Obi-Wan could see the approaching ship. He fought down the urge to ask Vader if it was Kuat or Sluis Van produced. He didn't care and the mere fact that he knew Anakin once had great interest ship design didn't make it a worthwhile topic of conversation. He didn't need the reminders of the boy that had burned away to make Vader.

"Was she briefed?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Yes," Padme returned tersely. "As much as I could."

Which was to say very little at all.

"Does she..." he waited for a better word to come to him and eventually gave up, rubbing two fingers between his brow. "Does she know?"

Padme bit her lip and looked away. If they had illusions that Vader was too ill to follow the conversation, he quickly shattered them.

"You didn't tell your agent of me?" Vader asked. His voice was rough, but amused.

"She knows Vader is present and that my mission was a success," Padme said. She squared up her shoulders, looking out the airlock to the transport tube now extending from the other ship, blotting out all the stars. Lola Sayu was conveniently to the starboard side, the better to keep Vader from knowing their precise location. "Other issues were never a point of discussion."

Obi-Wan closed his eyes at that.

"That was –"

"She didn't need to know," Padme snapped.

No one did. They courted disaster now, but that was the through line consistent in the course of their actions since well before Kamino. As awful as Ahsoka's response undoubtedly would be, it was hard to imagine when Padme should have informed her. Yet it felt like a premonition of the future: had they truly thought they would get away with this before anyone found out the full truth?

Had they hoped to just disappear, to take Vader and leave the galaxy without a trace?

We didn't think that far ahead, Obi-Wan thought. Getting this far seemed like the dream of a naïve fool, let alone any further.

"I suppose we are due the practice," Obi-Wan said bracingly. "In case this situation should recur."

Padme nodded slowly, pensive expression easing somewhat. Her politician's instincts were rising to the fore again as the extended connector from the Rebel ship sealed against their hull, wiping away her trepidation. Her decade long stint as spy was unimportant now. Only her ability to smooth ruffled feathers and persuade others to see her way, regardless of the expense to themselves, mattered in this moment.

"This farce will end well before any recurrence. I will see to that," Vader said. He had to pause between phrases, taking deep breaths indicative of his sickness. Almost like old times.

"If you are feeling well enough to provide color commentary, perhaps you should stop feigning weakness," Obi-Wan replied. He cast a narrow look over his shoulder to Vader, who glared back, but did not move away from the wall; for all that his intellect was intact, such as it was, his body did seem quite overpowered by the virus.

"Hush," Padme told them both.

They listened to the hiss of pressurization and Obi-Wan released an unnamed emotion into the Force, bringing his heels back to the deck; he'd found himself on his toes, craning his neck. He'd not seen her in more than ten years.

The galaxy had been a different place then.

You don't know they sent her, he cautioned himself. As awful as the truth was and as little as he wanted to speak it aloud, the thought was an unpleasant splash of cold water. He did wish to see her, if only to have someone else on this miserable boat to talk to. Someone with sense.

The airlock sensor beep, light turning green.

Padme did not hesitate to reach out for the control, opening the hatch with an abrupt whoosh.

"You insult me," Vader grumbled behind them. "You are entirely too trusting and you will pay for it."

Obi-Wan turned to him, grabbing one elbow and, with a flick of the Force, adjusting the energy binders to their shortest setting. Vader had only microns between his two wrists as the binders snapped together.

"Better?" Obi-Wan asked.

"My feet are unbound. If you intended make it so easy for me to escape, I don't know why you even make pretense towards holding me captive."

Obi-Wan kept his hand on Vader, lightly restraining him, but turned back to the hatch without another word. He didn't know why he was so vulnerable to Vader's nonsense. He'd been quite adept at tuning Anakin out.

The silhouette that soon filled the airlock corridor was unmistakable. Padme let out a shuddering breath before stepping through the hatch to greet Ahsoka, while Obi-Wan held himself back. He looked again to Vader, relieved to see his arrogant posture once more diminished. His head still rested on the wall, eyes closed as he tried to push away the pain and tiredness clouding his mind.

When Obi-Wan turned back, he found that Ahsoka had stopped cold, eyes locked onto him. He met her gaze with diffident, Jedi aplomb and it was not long before she looked away from him to Vader.

A smile tugged at her lips; Obi-Wan's stomach churned. It would be far easier if she would jump to the correct conclusions, he thought irritably. Or at least had the grace to jump to unhappy conclusions, even if they were inevitably the wrong ones.

"Did you retransmit the information?" Padme asked, skipping over formalities to draw Ahsoka's attention back to her.

"Yes," Ahsoka replied stridently. Vader jerked at the sound of her voice, eyes flying wide. He pulled immediately at Obi-Wan's grasp, perhaps unconscious of his own effort to get away. Ahsoka frowned slightly, but continued, "It's in Mon's hands and hardcoded into datapads I have in a secure location."

"How secure?" Padme pressed.

"Very. And moreso if you don't know where they are."

Padme nodded, conceding the point.

"I have the other half of the information. Due after resupply is complete."

Ahsoka merely rolled her eyes. She was hardly going to withhold food and fuel until full payment was rendered, not when she was just the courier and on Padme's payroll to begin with.

"You know, I was going to ask how it was that you subdued Vader, let alone got fleet details from him. But now," she gestured to Vader and Obi-Wan, smile returning, "I guess that answers for me."

"You're…" Obi-Wan fumbled for words, finishing lamely, "too kind."

Ahsoka gave a sharp laugh as she stepped onto _Vivacity_ 's deck. Padme trailed her cautiously. Obi-Wan noted that her hand was on her blaster. He sympathized, though he had no idea what good that would do.

"Make no mistake, I'm furious with you. Both of you. But," she looked again to Vader, eyes soft, "it's good to see you."

Vader had calmed – or at least, his illness prevented him from reacting as fully as Obi-Wan thought he otherwise would. He canted his head to the side as he studied Ahsoka. A rivulet of sweat trickled down the side of his face and he made no move to wipe it away. Ahsoka started forward, only to stop in confusion. If Padme did nothing, if Obi-Wan did nothing, there was clearly more afoot than Anakin Skywalker in a state of sickness and distress.

"What's going on?" she asked slowly. Her hand fell onto the pommel of one of her twin lightsabers. "Who else is here? You didn't leave Vader unguarded, did you?"

It was some kind of grace that Vader was not the sort of man who laughed; that he'd all but forgotten how to smile. Still, he lurched forward, unpleasant light in his eyes as he pushed away from Obi-Wan, bringing his bound hands up for Ahsoka to see.

"They're hardly that sort of fool, Padawan," Vader told her mirthlessly.

The Force shivered around her. Obi-Wan bore the brunt of the reaction, aware it was his due. His stomach turned over at the sudden chill, the hollow point where all her anger should have been. There was something like heartbreak instead.

Funny, Obi-Wan thought. How fresh that always felt, despite the familiarity.

"No," Ahsoka whispered.

"I'm sorry," Padme said. She stepped in front of Vader, giving him a withering look as she pushed his hands down. He was as weak as an Alderaanian pitten and made no resistance. Or, perhaps, he simply liked being pushed around by Padme. "I should have found some means to warn you. I worried that the channels weren't secure enough."

Ahsoka was shaking her head, incredulity giving way to anger. She flung out an arm, gesturing back to her ship.

"The channels? What, you think you should have told me yesterday morning? What about ten years ago, Padme, when you first recruited me to your Alliance!"

Padme's expression hardened.

"That I make no apology for. You watched my funeral," Padme said harshly. Her hand drifted down, over her abdomen. The hint was enough to make Ahsoka blanch. "I live with the decisions I made after that, but I will not apologize for them."

Obi-Wan could feel Ahsoka's whirl of emotions muddying the Force. The silt of anger and resentment a decade past had suddenly been churned up. She gazed at Padme, caught in that tumult only because she was the person Ahsoka knew she had the best chance of forgiving.

Obi-Wan was something else entirely. A Jedi, among the Masters who sat in judgment of her and found her guilty only out of political concerns. A Jedi who asked her back without an apology. A Jedi who had been as close to her as her own Master, yet left her to her devices in the bleakness of the Purge. A liar with no explanation or apology for the fact that he still lived.

Ahsoka didn't bother questioning him. Obi-Wan felt her skim over him and then turn her mind deliberately back to Vader. After a blank moment, he raised what he had in the way of shields. The deadening of sensation was a pleasant, if moderate, relief.

"What happened to you?" she asked Vader. Her jaw worked as she crossed her arms over her chest, gesture long ago adopted from her Master. "Thought you were more of a heavy breather these days."

"Your friends. And the scalpels of a Kaminoan."

What Vader lacked in facial expressions he more than made up for in tone. Weak or not, his every word dripped with malice and disdain.

Ahsoka's eyes flicked down, from his face to his hands. For the first time, she seemed to register that Vader's original prosthesis had been replaced with flesh. Vader's injuries had long been the source of speculation in the Empire. Now she had more cause than most to wonder what they have truly been, and by whose hand they'd been dealt, for the man before her bore virtually no resemblance to Vader – and yet, little enough to her own Master.

"Yes, well," Obi-Wan interjected, more than willing to get on with the transaction so he would not have to weather Ahsoka's presence long. It was awful enough being around Vader and remembering what Anakin should feel like in the absence of that power; Ahsoka's luminescent Force presence made it all the worse. Obi-Wan was already combating a pounding headache. He'd not shielded in so long that merely attempting it left him fatigued. "I think we might as well conduct the business we have."

Ahsoka glanced his way and narrowed her eyes, deliberately ignoring his words as she stepped forward to examine Vader more closely.

"They did a good job," she said as she leaned in, assessing Vader's gaunt features. She undoubtedly noted that, in addition to replacing the arm he'd lost to Dooku, the scar Ventress had left had been erased. He did not deserve those marks of heroism.

What reply Vader would have made was cut off as the ship jolted underneath them. Vader stumbled into the wall, legs crumpling underneath him, and Padme was immediately at his side, blaster drawn to cover any move he might make. Ahsoka looked aghast at the reaction. Steadying herself, she pulled her comlink out, back to the pilot of her ship.

A crackle of static was all that came back as she hailed him.

"What have you done?" Obi-Wan snapped.

Vader glared up at him.

"Nothing. As of yet." His hand skimmed along the juddering floor, fingertips assessing what even Obi-Wan knew he would not be able to discern from sensor readings. "Kuat K Type tractor beam; maybe five years out of date. They desynchronize with overuse if the mechanics don't know how to tune them correctly. They have limited use; it's rare to find them far from the Kuat shipyards."

He looked almost like Anakin, eyes bright and blue, a hint of smugness on his lips as he looked up at Obi-Wan.

"I take it we're near the Belderone system, then. Lola Sayu would have been a good choice for me – once upon a time."

"Very good," Obi-Wan returned snidely, "Anything else you've gleaned from your sojourn down there?"

"No. But haven't you figured it out. Who would use a tractor beam, Master?"

"Pirates," Padme said. And then she swore colorfully.

Obi-Wan agreed with the sentiment.


	6. Chapter 6

The deck juddered underneath Vader's hand. The sensation was unpleasant enough for him to move, skimming only his fingertips across the surface. He gritted his teeth and presumed Padme and Obi-Wan suffered enough distraction not to notice the way, even crouched, he had to struggle to keep his balance.

Kuat K types were not terrible tractor beams, in the scheme of things. Workmanlike, they required little in the way of repairs and had excellent output to draw ratios. Their one quirk truly was their calibration and even then, it just made for a noticeable and bumpy ride. Nothing a pack of lowlifes would bother considering, let alone paying anyone to fix.

A great, metallic thunk resounded through the corridor and Vader looked up sharply.

"They will board shortly."

"Thanks. I figured," Ahsoka responded.

She had pried open the control panel on the wall and strung the wires between her fingers. Obi-Wan was over her shoulder, unsure of what to do, but certain he could cast a shadow and make it harder for her to work. There was a reason Anakin had nearly always exiled the man to another room when working on repairs.

Vader curled his fingers inward, forming his hands into fists to brace against the deck. Losing the Force was no reason to lose sight of who he was. Anakin was not relevant now or ever.

Padme, at least, knew well enough to stand back out of the way. She still had her weapon unholstered, loose in her hand, back turned to Vader. It would be a simple matter to overpower her.

"What are you doing?"

Ahsoka transferred her comlink to her teeth, pulling at the wires with two hands now.

"Patching into the ship," Vader answered for her. Ahsoka nodded briskly as she continued to work. "A wider band will likely thwart their simplistic jamming algorithm.

"You do well, Padawan," he added after a moment.

Ahsoka tensed just briefly and then shook off the compliment.

Vader watched her curiously. He'd have assumed her another cruelty Obi-Wan had contrived for his punishment, if she hadn't been so clearly surprised by him and by Obi-Wan himself. He did not yet know what to make of her, nor the part she was to play in the coming fight.

Ally against the pirates, yes. Against any others, that was doubtful. And yet...

"Tell your pilot to jump," he told Ahsoka.

She shot him a glare.

"And rip her ship apart? Don't think so."

"The differential sheer will seal the breach. We're in the beam, not her. The pirates think themselves clever to drag your ship down with this one, but Kuat Ks do not have enough power across diffuse settings to actually pull two ships in."

"She's still docked," Padme pointed out. She sounded less aggressive than Vader thought she otherwise might; she was considering his plan on its merits, without immediate suspicion.

"That," Vader pronounced, cocking his head at her, "she can change."

"He's right. Damn him, he's right." Ahsoka had spliced her comlink to the panel while they talked, fingers pinching two wires and comlink held awkwardly in the space between her thumb and forefinger. That would require a touch of the Force. She called into the comlink, "Hera?"

A girl's voice responded. Vader could not pin the age down, but she could be no more than a teenager.

"Yeah, boss?"

"Decouple and jump out. We're not making the supply drop."

Vader could hear a shaky, calming breath taken by the girl on the other end of the line. His lungs hurt at the sound.

"What about you?"

Ahsoka straightened, chin up as if the girl could see it.

"I'll be fine. Tell Mon everything. Give her every file."

That explained her presence. She was the courier for the information Padme had extracted from him. Vader carefully rose up on his feet, struck once again by disgust at his own actions. He'd bartered away the Empire for her touch – oh, he denied it in the moment, but he knew that her promises were worth less than nothing. She'd never restore the Force to him, knowing the danger he represented.

In one sense, he could be proud of that. He hardly wanted her to forget what he was, demeaned and diminished as he was.

But pride could not assuage the gnawing hunger that lay inside his breast, the absence where the Force should have been. The furious chill of the Dark Side had abandoned him, leaving only himself. To say it made him feel sick was an understatement. Sick was the burn of the fever on his cheeks and in his blood, the weakness that he'd redoubled after his reckless show of ability in Obi-Wan's chamber. That was mere sickness.

This was wretchedness and nothing less. Unbeing.

"Hera, quickly!" Ahsoka commanded.

The girl made a frustrated sound, cut off by a sigh.

"I'll see you back at base," she said. Even through the poor connection, it was obvious she didn't believe her own words.

Vader restrained the urge to sneer. What confidence the Rebellion had in their agents. Worship the Jedi of the past as they did, he would have thought they'd even a shred of respect for the abilities former Jedi might still bring to bear now.

Metal screeched as the Rebel ship disengaged its docking mechanism, fighting against the tractor beam the entire time. In the airlock, docking clamps vibrated against the blue light of the beam, twisting under the pull of the ship and the energy surrounding them.

Vader watched Padme tense in front of him. He thought momentarily of a comforting lie he could tell and pressed his lips together, dismissing the idea. There'd be nothing they could do if the airlock breached.

And then the Rebel ship abruptly pulled free, rending metal. The friction heated the locked docking arm to a bright white. The tractor beam would not allow space to cool it. A not unsubstantial part of Vivacity's hull had gone with the docking arm, visible to Vader through the airlock port.

"It will hold," Vader said slowly.

The tractor beam itself should mend the damage to the _Vivacity_. As long as the pirates made the correct choice, but he was not going to mention that part.

They had two quarries in front of them, after all, and a tractor beam ready to reel only one in. Vader could imagine the strain trying to run the Kuat K on a broad enough spread to catch the _Vivacity_ and the Rebel ship. They were shaking their own ship apart, trying to take them both, and with the Rebel ship drawing away, they'd soon need to make a choice of who their true target was: the valuable Alderaani ship, or, presumably, the scuzzy Rebel ship. If Organa had seen fit to outfit the Alliance with worthier vessels that Vader had knowledge of, they might truly be in for trouble.

Whatever went through the pirates' minds did so quickly. The tractor beam blinked off for the barest moment, light from outside stalling and then snapping back on. Obi-Wan tensed, more attuned to the subtle shifts than Vader was – it was a subtlety that, despite his expertise, Vader needed the Force to perceive. And then the deck shook with renewed vigor as the tractor beam refocused on the _Vivacity_ , dragging it closer to the pirates and fully separating them from the Rebel ship. The energy made a loud crack against their hull; a good sound to hear, as it essentially welded closed the holes the Rebel ship had made when it broke away.

For a very brief moment, Vader saw stars out the sealed airlock. They were soon blotted out by the bright spark of a ship jumping to hyperspace, and then by the pirate ship dragging them close enough to dock.

Ahsoka exhaled a long breath and rocked back on her heels, casting a look back at Vader.

"What's the plan?"

Maybe it was just instinct that made her look to him. It was not choice nor trust. As soon as she realized what she had done, her blue eyes flew wide, and she jerked her head to the side, unwillingly looking to Obi-Wan instead.

Obi-Wan drew his lightsaber with two fingers, holding it lightly. His expression was cocky, pretending he had not noticed Ahsoka's slip.

"I think we can handle them easily enough," Obi-Wan said.

"I'd be honored," Vader said, injecting as much strength as he could into his voice and drawing Obi-Wan's intent, suddenly worried gaze. He bared his teeth as he completed the thought, "to fight by your side."

He did not suppose they would actually unlock the binders on his wrists, but pointing out the vulnerability of his position was not actually something he was interested in doing.

Padme sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. She walked over to him, taking him by the elbow. Her touch, as always, was an electrifying jolt that Vader could not resist. He should have pulled away.

"On second thought," Padme said, looking back at Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, "how about you fight the pirates, and I'll make sure he doesn't shoot either of you in the back?"

Vader glared down at her.

"I have _never –_ "

She rolled her eyes.

"You've never been as weak as you are now, my lord. Don't pretend what you've done has anything to do with your character."

He attempted not to bristle at the insult.

"Don't –" Ahsoka stopped as soon as everyone's eyes locked onto her. She rocked back on her heels and crossed her arms over her chest, deciding she might as well say it. "Don't call him that. It's not funny, what he is."

Padme gazed coldly back at Ahsoka; Vader had thought, once, they might be a kind of family.

"I know what he is," she said, enunciation precise.

A loud bang sounded against the hull. The pirates had their own docking mechanism and it didn’t involve coming in through their airlock, which had controls on the inside and would leave the pirates all too vulnerable. In all likelihood, they used a kind of laserdrill. If they had the correct specs of the ship, they would attach it to personnel quarters, venting them into space if the seal blew or else rushing anyone inside with the full boarding party. Of course, many a hapless pirate had no specs for the ships they attacked at all, relying on luck and a good eye for ship design. They nonetheless spaced the cargo they were out to steal as often as not.

"I agree that Vader is too valuable to risk in combat." Vader narrowed his eyes at the old man, wondering if that was a reference to their earlier conversation. His worth. Obi-Wan gave no hint of it, grim expression undercut somewhat by the snide twitch in his mouth, the corner pulling up. "However, my lady, I feel perhaps you are not the best guardian. I don't fancy turning a pirate raid into another opportunity for a conjugal visit."

In a past life, Vader knew Padme would have taken offense. All her political acumen and her well cultivated diplomatic mien aside, she would have visibly reacted. He knew that he would have tumbled the old man to the deck and punched the smile off his face, had he the energy.

Perhaps he could anyway.

He lurched forward, only to have Padme push him back, shooting him an irritable look. She was more annoyed with him than Obi-Wan, he thought angrily, but _he_ wasn't the one impugning her honor.

"Then you take him. Ahsoka and I can handle a few pirates,” Padme said.

"I admire your confidence," Vader said acidly. "But I see no reason to consider Obi-Wan your better, given my own encounter with him earlier."

Obi-Wan chuckled drily.

"Really, is that all it takes these days?"

Vader did not rise to the bait.

"I know what it is you see me as. The both of you," he hissed.

"Whoa, okay," Ahsoka stepped between them, palms out as physical barriers to stop them from moving any closer, though neither had made a move to. "We do not have time for this! _I'll_ take him."

Both Obi-Wan and Padme looked shamefaced at the offer.

"I don't believe that will be necessary, young one. If you are willing to face the pirates, I shall take custody of our resident war criminal."

Vader bite back the urge to remind Obi-Wan that he'd been present during the Clone Wars and knew too well that Obi-Wan's hands were hardly as clean as he pretended.

"Nah, it's alright. Gives me a chance to catch up with my old friend. Besides," Ahsoka cocked her head toward the sound of drilling; it had to be even louder to her, echoing through her montrals, "I’m still mad at you. I don’t think pirates are the ones who deserve me venting on them."

Padme accepted that with a nod and Vader did the same, provoking a scowl from Ahsoka.

“By which I mean that _you_ deserve it,” Ahsoka snapped at him.

Again, Vader nodded.

“I grasped your meaning – and I approve.”

Ahsoka gritted her teeth and looked instead to Obi-Wan, already regretting the decision she’d made.

"Take him back to the medbay," Obi-Wan said briskly, dismissing his chagrin at his own behavior as easily as that. Vader narrowed his eyes at the man. His words had always been cheap; he should have realized that long ago.

"I assume you'll lead the way?" Ahsoka asked Vader rhetorically.

He ignored her, looking back down at Padme's restraining hand. She was yet at his side. Despite the burn of fever, he could still feel the warmth of her hand through the thin medical tunic he wore, the line of her body close to his.

He'd never been as hollow as he was now. Even before he knew what it was, the Force had been with him. Under the influence of their Kaminoan virus, he sensed nothing; they'd deadened the galaxy as even Palpatine could not.

But what he could feel sharpened in his perceptions. He could see without the haze of red filters, hear without electronic aid. And his skin could warm under Padme's touch. He turned to her, edging closer, hair on the back of his neck pricking up at her nearness; he couldn't define the feeling in his stomach, just that it wasn't anything he'd felt in a decade.

Vader relished the way Padme lifted her head, meeting him in a kiss without another thought. He groaned low in his throat as she raised her other hand, blaster still grasped in it. The muzzle grazed his throat.

Her eyes were shuttered and dark when he broke the kiss. He found himself smiling and the expression came to him unconsciously, without effort, for the first time since he'd woken.

Vader raised his bound hands, awkwardly brushing the back of his forefinger down her check, fascinated by the anger that flared in her eyes, the only place at all he could see it. In the Force, that anger would have been his, bestowed on him as naturally as all of the Dark Side was.

It was still his. He welcomed it as a gift.

"Kill well, my love," he said softly.

* * *

 

 _Vivacity_ was not a large ship. It took little to navigate from the airlock near the hold to the upper level where the medbay and crew quarters were located. Ahsoka surely would have found the way herself and likely at a faster pace than Vader plodded along at – he refused to stumble in front of her. He refused to ask for the binders to come off. His shoulder hit repeatedly against the wall as he walked, taking one step, balancing himself, a feverish and winded breath, and then another step.

His anger should have blazed at the indignity – and there was a part of him that was quietly enraged that he should die at pirates' hands due to Padme and Obi-Wan's unskilled meddling – but infirmity was hardly new. He'd suffered worse and would most certainly again, once his Master found him.

Vader glared at the medbay door, all too far away for all that in was a handful of healthy strides away. He didn't welcome whatever grotesque undoing Palpatine would have in store for him, but at least it would have _purpose_ behind it.

"Wow," Ahsoka said, louder than she'd intended to judging by the awkward pause before she continued. Vader turned just enough to see her straighten her shoulders, arms folding defiantly across her chest. "They really did a number on you."

He twisted his mouth into a deep and deliberate frown.

"Indeed."

"I can hear you," she said. Her eyes searched his face. "And you can't – You really can't feel it, can you?"

Vader had never broken their Force bond. He didn't actually know how, if it was possible, particularly if extreme physical and psychic trauma were not enough to complete the job. There had been a few times, in the Emperor's company, that he'd felt that withered and abused bond in the back of his mind. Perhaps Palpatine plucked at it, the way he sometimes did the frayed link that led to Obi-Wan, but he'd never had much interest in actually following it back to its source. As he often liked to remind Vader, the ascendancy of the Jedi had passed. Vader’s interest in complete eradication was an infantile waste of time in the face of the infinite mysteries of the Dark.

It was just another tease, reminding him that he had the power to find Obi-Wan. That he could have done so at any time and the question was merely what stopped him: loyalty to Palpatine's teachings, or his own sentimentality?

His bond with Ahsoka was another matter. A different taunt. What could have been.

"Obi-Wan was clever in that. He knew well that he would need to disable me to keep me in custody," Vader explained. He wiped sweat from his brow with his forearm, dampening the sleeve visibly. He angled his arm to her.

"Right. Because, as we all know, that suit really wasn't keeping you down."

"The Dark Side offered compensations," Vader replied, but his mind was elsewhere.

The suit. A minor truth had very abruptly crystallized for him: his Master would most certainly entomb him in the suit once more. Palpatine had coveted him, fetishized his connection to the Force, but he also lived in fear of it. The Chosen One unburdened by prosthetics, once more at the height of his power, perhaps even stronger with fresh rage and the gifts of the Dark Side, that was certainly more than Palpatine could ever abide.

Greedy as his Master was, it was a virtue tempered by very real fear and very cunning pragmatism.

Vader could feel his own pulse along the line of stitches holding the wound on his arm together. He'd done that to himself.

Ahsoka cursed softly, coming to her own realization, erroneous as it was.

"And now they've fixed you. They fixed the Emperor's attack dog. What the kriff were they thinking?" A horrified laugh bubbled up from inside her. Vader's attention had drifted, a problem he only wished he could lay at the feet of the virus he was infected with, but he knew his own internal landscape too well to abide that falsehood. His brow furrowed slightly as he watched Ahsoka's belated reaction to him escalate. "That they could leash you? Keep you? _Save_ you?"

"There has been some discussion of barter, actually," Vader interjected.

Her eyes flashed with anger and she jerked her chin up, glaring at him. He felt a very real temptation to grin at her.

It was different from Obi-Wan and Padme. The twisted familiarity didn't provoke him, didn't make him twist himself in response, worsen. If anything, it presented an easy pattern to follow and Vader found little reason to reject it.

"Just get inside," she snapped.

She moved forward to hustle him along. The rest had done him enough good that he didn't actually need her hands to propel him forward, but that didn't stop him from leaning back into it just to annoy her. She removed one hand long enough to open the door with a casual gesture and flick of the Force, and then shoved hard, making him stumble into the medbay. He caught himself on the bed, anger making him grit his teeth.

"I can't believe they gave you Anakin's face," Ahsoka spat behind him.

Vader disliked that he could not loom over her, weakened as he was. He pressed his fingers into the bed, caught his breath, and turned. If he could have propped his fists on his hips, he would have. He settled for pointedly holding them in front of him, reminding her that she was acting out against a bound prisoner.

"Your surprise, even anger, were understandable, but now you pass into overdramatic."

Ahsoka turned her head aside, lips formed into a pout and shoulders slumped in a very good imitation of teenage sullenness.

"You would acquit yourself with more dignity if you acted your age," Vader advised her. "Or took note of your surroundings."

There was little to see in the medbay insofar as what Obi-Wan or Padme might unintentionally reveal about Vader's condition. He had searched in depth already. What he had done with the available equipment, that was another matter, and he was curious if Ahsoka was savvy enough to notice the tinkering he had undertaken. The device he had formerly worn affixed to his chest lay next to one machine, piggybacking off of its connection to the ship systems. It looked entirely defunct, though it actively transmitted every moment they remained in realspace.

Vader had taken the interference of the pirates as a sign, not merely an opportunity. The Force would have him back.

Ahsoka scanned the room through narrowed eyes, moving her head only fractionally as she took in the computers, the locked cabinets set into the walls, and other monitors still linked to Vader, beeping out his vitals. Her attention stopped momentarily on the readout displaying a blood sample with his greatly diminished midichlorian count, recognizing it on sight; Vader knew for a fact that he'd been the object of study in the Temple. Students had to learn to calibrate Jedi specialized medical technology, and who better than the Chosen One himself to use as exemplar?

She shrugged after a moment.

"No weapons – good. Seems defensible enough otherwise."

Vader scoffed at her.

"There is plenty available to weaponize."

The virus itself was unavailable and probably had little use on someone non-Force sensitive. It was possible it was even calibrated to Vader himself. But the syringes, those he had found easily enough. More to the point, there the sheer number of electronics made for a number of forbidding weapons if altered sufficiently or if their component parts were exposed.

Ahsoka moved her hands pointedly to the lightsabers on her hips. Vader held her gaze steadily until she realized the slip; the way her expression blanched was quite satisfying.

"You don't get one."

There were few things in life Vader cared about less than whether or not he would have a weapon to wield in his defense in this scenario. He'd never worried overly about his own death, regardless of his position or his allegiance or his name. That had never been his concern.

So, ignominious as it would be to die at the hands of pirates, he just couldn't bring himself to care.

Not that it would happen.

"You will kill in my defense," Vader said to Ahsoka, voice thrumming with approval. "That's all I needed to know."

Ahsoka clenched her teeth and then, moving very quickly, she leaned down and started working on the straps of her boot, unsnugging them just enough to pull out a holdout blaster from a hidden holster. She lobbed it at him from a crouched position, frown deepening when he caught it.

Vader looked down at the tiny, ugly weapon.

"Disgusting," he told her.

"How about you tell me what's going on," Ahsoka said, "And I'll make sure you don't have to use that thing."

The deal was intriguing. She certainly wasn't offering a real defense of him – or at least, she thought she was threatening him, when he knew she was just promising him what he already knew honor demanded. She'd fight if the pirates managed to get this far, or accidentally drilled into this area of the ship. She might be telling herself that he was a resource, he'd given Padme intel and he would only give more in the future. He was priceless as a hostage.

Vader knew that wasn't it.

Anakin Skywalker's memory had value, for once. And Vader didn't hate the feeling.

"Keep me appraised of the pirates' advance," Vader said. He had no wish to be distracted by storytelling. Ahsoka waved her hand, rolling it at the wrist to tell him to get on with it already. He knew her well enough to trust that he didn't need something as mundane as verbal confirmation. She'd keep her side of the bargain. He continued, "My beloved wife and erstwhile Master ambushed me on Kamino. For reasons I do not know, they immersed me in bacta for some months and, with the aid of a friendly cloner, affixed new limbs to replace those that Obi-Wan severed during our last meeting."

Ahsoka's eyes flicked from his face to his hands, still bound and still holding the blaster, and then his legs. He chose not to confirm the assumption.

"And then," the words ground out of him, rasping at his lungs, "they infected me."

"With what?"

"Illegal bio-engineering. It's attacking my midichlorians."

She should have surmised as much from the readouts, but nonetheless seemed surprised, stepping forward before she could stop herself.

"That's not – Obi-Wan wouldn't – That technology was never developed. And even if someone could do it, why wouldn't the Emperor have used it himself?" Ahsoka asked, words tumbling out of her as she tried to deny the obvious.

Vader waited for her to look back to him before dropping the blaster to the bed, slipping off onto bare feet. He reached out to fold his hands over Ahsoka's. She flinched and tried to pull back, but he held fast, moving to hold her by the wrist, staring her down until she relented, allowing him to press her palm to his feverish brow. Her expression crumpled in front of him.

"No..." she whispered.

"They healed my body to kill my soul, Ahsoka," he told her.

It was a heresy. An abomination. And never mind that it was done to her Master – it was by the hands of people she'd called friends.

She swayed forward, lips parted and emotion visible in her eyes. She believed him. She couldn't help it.

He watched as she slowly recovered herself. Her un-Jedi-like hatred of who he'd become flared back to life and she jerked her hand away. She clenched her jaw, turning her head as if to listen.

"They're in the cargo bay. Padme is fighting. I think hand to hand. They must have taken her blaster."

Vader felt his stomach drop.

"Doubtful."

"Believe me or don't." Ahsoka shrugged. She began to pace the medbay, as far away from him as she could get, picking up various bits of detritus that had accumulated during Vader's stay. She leaned forward to look at his medical charts, seeing without reading, and then threw a cocky look his way. "Would I lie about someone I care about?"

He considered.

"No. Not even to hurt me."

She pressed her lips together, before nodding. She couldn't deny the obvious accord they'd reached. She kept striving to put distance between them, create conflict, to direct anger at him and then foundering because, despite everything, they were Master and Padawan.

“Would it hurt you?” she asked idly, cocking her head at him.

Vader scowled and ignored the question.

"How many are aboard?" Vader asked instead.

Ahsoka walked to the bed and hopped up on it. After a moment, Vader joined her, sitting almost close enough for their knees to touch, toes of his feet curling. He gazed toward the closed medbay door, listening intently, while Ahsoka focused in the Force. There was a slightly electric prickle as she drew the energy to her; Vader grasped at the feeling, the substitute for actually sensing the Force for himself. He didn't imagine the hair raising on his arms. It was real.

She gave a low whistle.

"About a dozen."

"Organa was remiss in how he coded this ship's identification," he grumped. "It was clearly too tempting a target."

"Well, Mr. Imperial High Command, I imagine he gave it diplomatic licensing for the sake of dodging your friends. It never occurred to him that pirates were such a problem in Imperial space. I guess he was naïve about how effective the Empire is."

Vader turned his head in surprise, but Ahsoka kept her eyes on the door. He had not expected such a quick embrace of who he was. Certainly not for her to start sassing him on Imperial policy minutes after their reunion. He suppressed a smile.

"I will bring the matter of increased patrols before the Emperor," he replied. "Happy?"

"Blissfully."

He could have let the moment stretch out, but feared how sourly it would end.

"How do they fare?"

"Padme's two are down – Obi-Wan's six are still fighting. Poorly, but you know. Numbers."

Vader felt a flash of concern, the first since they'd been boarded. Again he cursed Organa's poor planning, glaring at the door and hands tightening on the edge of the bed. He'd rip the man apart himself once he returned to Imperial Center.

"And the other four?"

"Two are looting the mess and the other two." Ahsoka nudged him in the side and hopped off the bed. "They're on their way here."

Vader strained his ears. He would have thought that, in the absence of the Force, his other senses would be more attuned. But no. Not at all. His head rang and his mouth felt dry and his entire body ached – and that was just the virus, not the exhaustion and muscle weakness he felt because he'd been immobile for months and just trying to move on such withered limbs took almost more effort than he could muster. He, unfortunately, did not have sharper hearing in compensation for the dead weight of the Force's silence.

That it was his own ears that failed him rather than cochlear implants was little comfort.

Ahsoka drew her lightsabers, bouncing on the balls of her feet with a readiness that edged too close eager anticipation to truly be of the Jedi way. She'd always found battle a thrill, a joy even. It had been difficult to pull her from the war when they were winning just the same as when they lost.

And Vader knew himself to be far worse than her on that front. Obi-Wan had chided him so often for both flaws, but it was only in teaching Ahsoka that he'd come upon the correct path. Sometimes he'd even felt balance.

The clomping of the pirates finally reached Vader's ears just in time for Ahsoka to throw him a fierce, forgetful grin.

"Get ready," she said, and she lifted two fingers from her shoto blade, applying the Force to the door controls.

Three Nikto pirates were on the other side of the door. Only Vader, knowing Ahsoka so well, registered the surprise in her posture, recovered so quickly it might as well not have been there at all.

Vader was not given to waiting in the wings during a battle, but he had little alternative. His limbs were sluggish, while Ahsoka's were fast – primed by adrenaline and the Force.

She moved swiftly to ignite both blades, swiping one pirate's weapon in half while he was raising it against her. She pivoted to elbow the other in the face and then, using her reverse grip to its intended purpose, slid her sizzling blade directly into the pirate's belly. He fell with a muffled groan while his partner stumbled into the medbay, trying to get around Ahsoka so that he and the third Nikto could box her in.

Ahsoka spared him a glance over her shoulder before tumbling forward, through the door with both lightsabers extended. A whiff of burnt duraplast reached Vader as she cut through the Nikto's armor. She rolled back to her feet and turned just in time for Vader to raise the blaster she'd given him.

The bolt burned into the last pirate's back. It didn't kill, and the man swore in florid, if slightly agrammatical, Huttese, breaths ragged as he twitched his head to the side, torn between trying to look at his two enemies. It was clear he was still deciding if it was worth turning him back on Ahsoka for the chance to at least get a little revenge on Vader.

Vader made the choice for him. He lowered the blaster, aiming for the pirate's left calf, and this shot echoed loudly in the medbay. The Nikto's leg collapsed under him and he thudded to the floor.

Ahsoka's blade came down very suddenly, slicing the Nikto's head from his neck. It rolled to the side, just a bit, rictus of pain quite visible. Her knuckles were white around the hilts of her lightsabers, anger bright in her eyes.

Vader raised an eyebrow in query at her.

"Thank you," she said tersely. "For the reminder."

* * *

 

Vader had some appreciation of silence. True, a space ship was never terribly quiet to him. He could hear the engines even of a well-tuned vessel, the hydraulics, the droids and crew, even the bolts in the seams. He could hear space whisking past and the Force, a sense that couldn't be compared to anything else at all, flowing and pooling between the stars. For all of that, he nonetheless had become a man who sought respite in meditation. Where he could focus on those sounds instead of the mechanized sound of his own belabored breathing.

Ahsoka, however, did not. That had not changed in their time apart.

"You didn't explain," she said.

She was pacing again, palms striking her thighs in annoyance every time she turned, caged by the small medbay. She’d pushed the bodies of the Niktos into the hall with the Force and the sight of her casual use of the power inaccessible to him gnawed at him. He was growing impatient despite himself. He did not relish a return to the status quo before Ahsoka’s arrival – did not want to bear out this silence with Obi-Wan and Padme’s expectant gazes before his own plan unfolded – and yet he also disliked his current situation.

Surely Obi-Wan is a more competent killer than this, Vader thought. He did have some experience with the man's prowess. But whatever the status of the remaining pirates, neither Padme nor Obi-Wan had sounded the all clear yet.

"What didn't I explain?" Vader asked. He'd folded his legs under himself, a parody of the standard meditative pose. He kept thinking of reclining. Just laying down and staring at the ceiling and pretending he could bear the silence of the Force.

Ahsoka snorted loudly and Vader tipped his head to her, even though her back was turned. He absolutely knew what she meant.

"Why you turned," she said flatly.

Vader considered how to answer, eventually settling merely with a nod of agreement. He had not explained and he had little interest in changing that. Padme and Obi-Wan found his reasons uncompelling. For Ahsoka to work with the Rebellion, even after the betrayals of the Order, spoke to her similar inability to see past her deeply held illusions about the Jedi and the Republic. Perhaps he could wear her down, once in custody aboard a Star Destroyer, but a simple telling of how the Jedi revealed their faithless disbelief in the existence of innocent life would garner nothing but jeering.

Ahsoka could believe that a Jedi would poison him, and yet not that Jedi would allow Padme to suffer and die as she bore their children. To Vader, it was all of an accord, and baffling that those two contradictions could live in one's mind.

"You will understand in time, young one," he said. "What of you? How did you survive?"

She stopped pacing long enough to give a mocking, gracious bow.

"By the grace of your training, of course."

"You proved worthy. So many did not."

"It had nothing to do with worth and you know it," Ahsoka snarled. She pulled herself into the Force, deliberately calming down, and then lifted her chin. "You can try to tick me off all you want, old man. But there was a compliment hiding in there."

If he were younger, Vader would have rolled his eyes.

"That was my intention."

She just shook her head, exasperated.

"I admit curiosity," he said. "I had other duties to attend, but I kept an eye out for your location after the Emperor's ascension. None were ever reported."

His memories of the first days of the Empire were hazy, a blur of rage and pain. It had taken considerable time before he rebuilt himself into Vader. The name bestowed at Palpatine's feet was merely the seed of who he could become. Anakin Skywalker knelt as he was, little more than a confused boy. He rose the same. It was only fire and pain that taught him who he was. But he did remember thinking of Ahsoka as he stalked the halls of the Temple. He remembered broken breath, drawn consciously as he fought the new respirator. Standing at Palptatine's side to listen to the litany of the dead. Her name had been conspicuously absent.

"What would you have done?" Ahsoka asked.

He startled, drawn from his remembrance of those terrible days. He hadn't thought of his turn in such a long time; he should have, he suddenly realized, knowing now that Padme had not died as he suspected.

It took a moment for him to parse Ahsoka's words.

"Killed you."

Ahsoka met his eyes for a very long moment.

"Right. Of course."

Vader glared. He wasn't going to argue with an intransigent apprentice about whether or not he was evil enough to kill her. He'd done far worse.

She could be counted on to be herself in all things. Giving up the staring contest, she pivoted on one foot, pacing again the length of the medbay.

"So... wife? When did that happen?" Ahsoka threw the words out casually, but they still sounded like an attack.

“You remain a Jedi.”

“I do not,” she replied tartly.

“You disapprove of my marriage.”

Ahsoka brought one hand up. Her back was still to him, but it was clear she was pinching the bridge of her nose. She blew out an irritated breath, fingers splayed as she returned them to her sides, and she carefully turned in place to look at him once more.

“I just want to know if there was ever a time I should have trusted you.”

Vader’s mouth flexed, corner turning up. He could feel the dark heat of rage tugging at him – that she would question his love for Padme in those terms when he knew, when she knew, all along that it had been true – and waited it out, cooling slowly like the recycled air that washed over him, chilling him through his thin medical tunic.

“The answer is no.”

Ahsoka scoffed.

“I knew it!”

Vader smiled grimly at her.

“You didn’t. You were a fool and no less of one than Obi-Wan.”

“Please, everyone knew there was something going on between you and Padme!”

Vader inclined his head in acknowledgment. That had never been the point. A vow to Padme was a betrayal of the Order. Unproven, mere acts meant nothing.

“On the day we met, I’d been wed to Padme for months already. In love with her since childhood, in defiance of all Obi-Wan’s teachings. But, young one, that it not what makes you a fool. My lies run deeper than that and you never suspected.

“On the day we met, I was a murderer dozens of times over. Of warriors and children and the thoroughly undeserving. I was already what I am today, but you believed the lie of Anakin,” Vader pronounced. He was, perhaps, overstating things. He remembered that boy and knew he could never have stood at the Emperor's side. Regardless of the cost, Vader still sought nothing less.

Ahsoka crossed her arms. Her rosy complexion had gone faint pink, leaving her face bloodless and wan.

“I don’t believe you.”

“That is why you are a fool.”

She gestured suddenly, flinging out an arm.

“When? When would you have done that? Fitting in massacres between battle campaigns, were you? Oh, and that’s not even getting into the who… sure, Darth. You’re exactly as scary and bad as you say and you always were. Why didn’t I see it?”

“It was before the war, on Tatooine, to avenge the death of my mother,” Vader said. The words came easily, though in a rush.

He hadn’t told anyone since Palpatine and if there was anything in his life he regretted, it was that. It was not the blood on his hands, not the anger in Padme’s eyes or the cut of Obi-Wan’s blade. He should never have entrusted his sins to Palpatine.

The medical machines beeped in the silence, not quite loud enough to drown out their own breathing and for the first time it did not make him think of the suit – or his future once again within it. It was dissonant and settled instead in the part. Only the thoughts in Vader’s head grounded him from the sudden feeling that they were on a Republic cruiser and that he was making his confession to one of the right people, one of the few he could trust.

Ahsoka’s shook her head.

“I loved you.” Her voice was quiet, disbelieving. “We were Jedi and I loved you, but you are right about one thing. I’m a fool.”

Vader pressed his bare foot to the floor, unthinking. The memory of holding Ahsoka was distinct. His chin fit perfectly between her montrals when she was a Padawan.

The medbay door hissed open, breaking the moment and drawing their attention. Vader shifted back onto the bed, whatever fleeting impulse he'd felt all but forgotten, and Ahsoka turned to the door, hands propped on her hips as if she'd been waiting impatiently all this time.

Obi-Wan stepped over the body of a Nikto pirate, shaking out his robes as he did so. He frowned immediately at the emotions he sensed flowing between Vader and Ahsoka. Padme, sweaty and with hair falling out of her carefully arranged updo, following quickly behind him. Her eyes locked almost immediately onto the blaster still held loosely in Vader's lap.

"Ahsoka," Padme started. "What did you do?"

Ahsoka jerked, words catching up with her just enough for her to wheel around, ready to defend herself from whatever the accusation actually was.

Obi-Wan didn’t give her the chance to explain.

“The intent was to _not_ give him a weapon. As he is our prisoner,” he said lightly, disapproval lining his face.

“Did you kill the remaining pirates?” Vader asked, diverting attention from Ahsoka. “The two in the mess?”

Padme gave him a long look.

“It was just one.”

Vader nodded. It was only that Ahsoka had been off about the locations of the pirates, not the number. All seemed to be accounted for.

He flipped the blaster in Padme’s direction, pleased when she had to fumble to catch it. A furrow formed between her perfect eyebrows as she looked down at it. She glanced to Obi-Wan who was frowning deeply. He gave a quick shake of his head to her, admonishing, but it was clear she couldn’t help it.

“What did you do?” she asked again, but when she looked to Ahsoka it wasn’t at all in suspicion. It was with wonder. Hope.

Ahsoka shrugged uncomfortably.

Vader narrowed his eyes at the interaction.

“We fought together. You should have considered allowing me to join the battle,” he said.

Padme shook her head immediately, dismissing the idea. He hadn’t meant it in any seriousness, but he felt nonetheless annoyed by her reaction.

“So, we’re done?” Ahsoka asked. She rubbed her hands on her trousers, nose scrunched as she looked away from the group. “What about their ship?”

Obi-Wan sighed.

“Pragmatism wins the day, I believe. We are still in need of supplies. And for the ship itself, I suppose it qualifies as spoils.”

“As payment. For all of this,” Ahsoka replied tersely.

She still wasn’t looking at them and Vader straightened, taking note of her distraction. Her expression was exactly that as when the _Twilight_ ’s oscillator desynchronized, making her montrals ache. He could recall brushing his fingertips across her temples on many occasions, using his limited abilities in healing to sense the source, to ease the pain. Sometimes it was other than mechanical problems on the ship. Sometimes it was due to subspace distortion, when they were in the gravitational shadow of a ship, skimming too close to be safe for the sake of a mission.

He wondered when she would realize there was another ship close by.

If the heart monitors were correctly linked to him, they would have jumped in excitement and fear. Vader quashed the thought and sought to calm his heart. Obi-Wan and Ahsoka were listening to his mind, whether they wished to or not.

“Of course,” Padme said. She looked regretful and reached out one hand, relief flitting over her face when Ahsoka grudgingly took it. “I should have told you.”

Ahsoka gave a quick, breathy snort.

“I get why you didn’t.”

Obi-Wan walked to stand next to Vader, arms folded as he scrutinized the other man.

“I almost do not dare ask, but I’ve never claimed not to be a fool.” Vader had a reply to that on his lips, but Obi-Wan quickly raised a hand from his arm, forestalling the comment. “You didn’t take the opportunity to escape. You had a weapon, potential allies, even a ship if you could make it off this one.”

“I’m hardly in any condition to mount an escape attempt.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes traced Vader’s face, watching him sweat through another round of chills.

“I don’t believe you.”

Vader looked askance, to Ahsoka. Her eyes widened and, mere moments later, the jolt of a tractor beam once more hit the _Vivacity_.

And now Vader had cause to smile up at his old Master.

“You shouldn’t.”


End file.
